The Gemara states (Sanhedrin 7A): “How do we know the rule that one should be ‘pleasant in judgment.’ Because it is stated: ‘Do not go up on steps to My Mizbeach.’ (Rashi explains this to mean that one should not go up forcefully.) And this verse is placed next to the verse of: ‘These are the judgments that I placed before them.’”
Sefer Otzros Hatorah understands from this that every Dayan must issue fair and true judgments, but in order to do so he needs Heavenly assistance to ensure that he doesn’t err in his judgment. Chazal are teaching us that only if one is pleasant and nice is he able to merit this Siyata D’Shmaya to issue a correct judgment.
He illustrates this with a story of two men who brought a din Torah to Rav Yaakov of Lisa zt”l, author of Chavos Daas and Nesivos Hamishpot. One of the men claimed that he found a gold coin in the marketplace, which he kept for himself. The other man claimed that coin fell out of his pocket and he had not given up hope of finding it.
Rav Yaakov intuited that the man who claimed to have dropped the coin was lying. He asked him to leave the room and then asked the man who found it to hand it to him. He looked at the coin and began to talk out loud – loud enough for the other man, who was standing right outside the door, to hear him. He said, “This coin has a small hole next to the first letter. That is a clear siman. If the claimant knows this siman, then the coin belongs to him.”
When the man was brought back into the room, he immediately said, “Rabbi, if you look at the coin, you’ll see a small hole next to the first letter.” Rav Yaakov showed him that the coin had no hole and said, “Obviously this isn’t the coin you lost. It cannot be yours.”
