Slow to Anger: Mercy Only for the Returning

1“Hashem is slow to anger and abundant in kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, yet He does not wholly clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.”¹ Moshe said these words in his prayer after the sin of the spies. Why does he not list here all the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy given in Parshas Ki Sisa?² “Hashem, Hashem, God, merciful and gracious” is missing, along with other attributes.

2Chazal teach: “When Moshe went up on high, he found the Holy One, blessed be He, sitting and writing ‘Hashem is slow to anger.’ He said to Him, ‘To the righteous?’ He answered him, ‘Even to the wicked …’”³ But why would the righteous need Hashem to be slow to anger? Since they have not sinned, what use is this attribute to them?

3We can explain this as follows. The Name Hashem stands for the attribute of mercy, and the Gemara says: “‘Hashem, Hashem’: I am He before a person sins, and I am He after a person sins and does teshuvah.”⁴ The Rosh asks: granted that after a person sins he needs mercy, but why does he need the attribute of mercy before he sins?⁵ He answers that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows a person's innermost thoughts and knows that he will sin, and even so He gives him life, health and every good. That is “I am Hashem before he sins.” We may say that Hashem deals with him in mercy because it is revealed and known before Him that this person will later return in teshuvah and resolve never to go back to this sin.⁶ That is why he is privileged to receive abundant good and the attribute of mercy.

4aThis lets us explain our verse. We do not find that Bnei Yisrael did teshuvah for their sin with the spies. Even after Yehoshua and Kalev rebuked them, Bnei Yisrael did not accept their rebuke and persisted in their rebellion. [Even what they said afterward, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place … for we have sinned,”⁷ was against the will of Hashem.] With the sin of the Golden Calf, by contrast, we find that they did teshuvah, as the verse says: “Moshe said to the people, ‘You have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up …’ And Moshe returned to Hashem and said, ‘Please! This people has sinned a great sin.’”⁸

4bIn the holy sefer Aron Eidus, my great-uncle, zt"l, asks: why did Moshe Rabbeinu, whose way was always to plead in Bnei Yisrael's defense, describe their sin in such grave terms? He explains that at the time of the Calf, Bnei Yisrael thought they were doing nothing wrong: they intended to have an intermediary between themselves and their Father in Heaven, as the Ramban and other commentators explain.⁹ So Moshe told them, “You have sinned a great sin,” and stirred them to teshuvah. Once Moshe Rabbeinu had shown them how great the sin was and they had done teshuvah, he said before the Holy One, blessed be He, “Surely they now know that they sinned a great sin, and they have already done teshuvah.” Those are his holy words.

5That is why, after the sin of the Calf, which they did repent of, the verse says “Hashem, Hashem, God, merciful and gracious”: “Hashem” before a person sins, and “Hashem” after he sins and does teshuvah. But with the spies, Bnei Yisrael were not privileged to do teshuvah. So all Moshe could ask was that they not be killed all at once, so that there would be no chillul Hashem, a desecration of Hashem's Name.¹⁰ And that is indeed what happened.¹¹ That is why the verse here does not say “Hashem, Hashem, God, gracious and merciful,”¹² but begins with the attribute “slow to anger.” Although the attribute of judgment rests upon them, since they did not repent, the attribute of slowness to anger means that Hashem will not hurry to punish them. But the attributes of mercy, from “Hashem” through “and gracious,” and even “Hashem before he sins,” do not apply to them, for all of these apply only to those who return in teshuvah.

6This also explains Chazal's words “slow to anger to the righteous.” They mean those who have returned in teshuvah and from then on count as tzaddikim. As is well known, Chazal said: “If a man betroths a woman on condition that ‘I am a completely righteous man,’ we must treat her as possibly betrothed, for perhaps he had thoughts of teshuvah.”¹³ So the moment people do teshuvah, they become tzaddikim. When Moshe asked, “To the righteous?” the Holy One, blessed be He, answered that the attribute applies even to the wicked, such as the generation here, who did not return in teshuvah. That is why Moshe Rabbeinu now invoked this attribute before Him.

7May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us be privileged to return to Him in complete teshuvah, truly and wholeheartedly. Amen, may it be His will.