Ka'as is not a flash of irritation. It is the anger that takes up residence, the heat that settles in and starts making decisions. Kohelet warns that ka'as lodges in the bosom of fools (Ecclesiastes 7:9); the verb there is rest, settle, dwell. The fool is not the man who feels anger. He is the man who gives it a room.

When Ya'akov (James) writes that the orgē of man does not work the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20), the Hebrew under the Greek is ka'as, and the righteousness in view is tzedek, equity administered rather than a feeling possessed. Read it as the field report it is. Ya'akov ran the daily distribution in Jerusalem for three decades while walking past the men who killed his brother, and his finding is operational: rage cannot administer anything. It will not staff the tables, it will not keep the ledger honest, it will not get bread to an overlooked widow. Be quick to hear, slow to pronounce, and give ka'as no room at all, because the work of equity is done by hands that anger does not govern.