NUM368 Rabbi Eliezer said: … do not be easily moved to anger; Pirkei Avot, Perek II, mishnah 15. The wise King Solomon says, "Anger rests in the lap of fools" (Ecclesiastes 7:9). The lap is not a secure resting place. As soon as a sitting person rises, his lap is no more, and anything that was on it falls off. This is the position of anger in the personality of the fool. It is ready to "pop" at a moment's notice. At the slightest provocation his reserve vanishes, and his anger is released to explode. Said Resh Lakish: "Any man who becomes angry--if he is wise, his wisdom leaves him; if he is a prophet, his prophecy departs from him." As proof he sites the verse, "Moses was angry with the officers of the army…" [this verse]. Shortly afterward, he notes, Elazar the cohen had to say "to the men of war who had gone to battle: This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded Moses" (Numbers 31:21). We can only conclude, says Resh Lakish, that Moses' knowledge and wisdom had temporarily left him. Again, we read that Elisha exclaimed angrily to Jehoshaphat: "Were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would neither look at you nor see you" ( II Kings 3:14). But he had to add immediately, "Now bring me a minstrel"; and we read, "when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him" ( II Kings 3:15). He needed the cheer of music to restore the power of prophecy that anger had driven from him (T.B. Pesahim 66b). Is therefore best to be, as we describe our Creator in the musaf prayers of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, "difficult to provoke and easy to pacify."
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