GEN512 … a destroying angel is created whenever a man sins, as we have been taught: “He who commits a sin acquires a prosecutor for himself” Mishnah Avot 6:13.  This angel stands before the Holy One saying: “So-and-so made me.”  As no creature can exist without the divine flow of power, how does the destroying angel who stands before God exist? It would only be right were the Holy One to say: “I will not nourish this destroying angel; let him go to the one who made him to be sustained by him.” If He were to say this, the destroyer would at once descend to snatch the sinner’s soul or to cut it off.  Or the sinner would be obliged to expiate his offense in creating the destroyer by enduring suitable punishment for his sin until the destroyer is annihilated.  The Holy One does not behave in this fashion.  He bears the sin and endures it.  He nourishes the destroyer and sustains it as He does the whole world, until one of three things happens.  Either the sinner repents and makes an end of the destroying angel by the penances he inflicts upon himself.  Or God, the righteous Judge, brings the destroyer to naught by bringing suffering or death upon the sinner, which clears his record.  Or the sinner descends to Hell to pay his debts.  This is the meaning of Cain’s plea: “My sin is too great to bear” [this verse]. Our Rabbis of blessed memory interpreted this as “You, God, bear [that is, You nourish and sustain] the whole world; is my sin so heavy that you cannot bear it [that is, sustain it until I repent]?” This is the greatest quality of tolerance, the God nourishes and sustains the evil creature brought into being by the sinner until the latter repents.  From this a man should learn the degree of patience in bearing his neighbor’s yoke and the evils done by his neighbor even when those evils still exist.  So that even when his neighbor offends him, he bears with him until the wrong is righted or until it vanishes of is own accord and so forth.  GOODSOC 17-18