Timeless Torah

A zealous Pinchas swung his deadly spear, “Avenging Hashem’s vengeance.” A fascinating perspective of this unlikely hero is provided by G-d Himself, who declared, “Pinchas became enraged (when in fact) I should have been the One Who was angry!”
So who stopped Him? Furthermore, a happy G-d sounds ok by me. And if the Master was unwilling to become angry, why did Pinchas feel compelled to take His place? A quick review of the entire episode will unveil a most exquisite explanation. Bilaam was hired to curse the Jewish nation. Rashi opines that Bilaam’s expertise was his ability to determine when Hashem was angry. At that moment of Divine wrath, anyone, including Bilaam, could direct G-d’s wrath and utter a powerful and destructive curse.
But what’s the big deal? Did not King David write, “G-d gets angry every day?” (Psalms 7:12) Yet as the Talmud clarifies, “His anger lasts but a moment.” And who was the only human ever to divine that precise moment? You guessed it, Bilaam; hence the power of his curses. Nonetheless, Bilaam’s evil plans were foiled. As the Gemara explains, during the entire period that Bilaam attempted to curse the Jews Hashem avoided even this standard, daily, moment-of-rage. Anger, is usually not premeditated and planned. Imagine a teacher informing his class, “Okay boys, I’m telling you now. It doesn’t matter whether you’re good or bad. Once a day I’m going to get really angry.” The analogy may not be perfect, for the students may actually behave an entire day. Contrast this to humanity at large and ask has there ever been a single day that man (or men, somewhere on earth) has not strayed, thus deservedly earning Hashem’s wrath? All the same, the idea of a one-a-day, pre-arranged second-of-ire seems rather strange.
G-d Almighty is the source of every aspect of creation, which contains both the potential for good and bad. Take anger for example. While generally considered a negative trait, consider a world completely devoid of it. Anger is often the catalyst for positive change, and without it we would not be able to take a stand against evil. So Hashem created anger, just like He created trees. How we utilize this aspect of creation is for us to decide. A crucial example of anger’s positive aspect is related by our Sages, “One should always enrage one’s Yetzer Ha-tov (good disposition) against one’s Yetzer Ha-ra (bad disposition).” Due to the complacent nature of man, arousing oneself to change is an inherently difficult task. What is therefore necessary is an enraged Yetzer Tov.
That is why Hashem expresses anger once a day. As He is the source of anger (and everything else), were He not to give expression to some form of anger, we would be incapable on our own to overcome our inner demons.
At this point, the cunning Bilaam realized (to his surprise and disappointment), that Hashem was avoiding His daily moment-of-wrath in order to foil the sorcerer’s curses. But Bilaam did not become Public Enemy #1 by being a quitter. It dawned upon the ever sly Bilaam that if G-d wasn’t steamed, there was a general lack of anger in the atmosphere, impeding the Jews’ ability to battle their base desires: So as the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
So Bilaam took a different tack. He gave up on cursing the Jews, and took advantage of their inherent weakness, suggesting that the Moabite women might now prove a temptation too great for the Jews, in their present state, to overcome. Indeed, his plans bore fruit. The nation, who in Egypt had managed to completely avoid any intermarriage, now found itself unable to resist.
Pinchas realized that the plague would not stop unless his fellow Jews regained their moral compass. Yet since this was dependent on a non-forthcoming Heavenly anger what could be done before all was lost? So Pinchas searched within himself for some righteous indignation. With great effort, he grasped upon his own zealousness and built upon it, until he conjured up a tremendous wrath against an all too permissive and amoral society. Pinchas wrapped himself up in the mantle of Hashem’s holy anger undertaking Hashem traditional role. This re-infused into the world a “holy anger,” and put a stop to the sin and its resultant plague. There is a vital lesson in this Biblical story. The next time you want to get angry, consider if it’s worth it. It would be a shame to waste G-d’s gift, even His gift of anger over petty annoyances and insignificant issues, when in fact we could be using it to avoid sin and improve our character and our lives. Maybe, like Pinchas, we could even use it to save our people.