Rabbi says: "In the future when the Messiah will come, all Israel will mourn. For whom will they mourn? There are various opinions among the sages concerning it. One says they will mourn for Messiah, the son of Joseph, who will be killed. Others say they will mourn for the Yezer ha-Ra' (evil inclination) which will be put to death. The Gemara comments as follows: He who says that the mourning will be for Messiah, the son of Joseph, has a plausible view, for it is written: 'And they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for an only son' (Zech.12.10), which means that the people should mourn for the Messiah, the son of Joseph, as one mourns for an only son. But the view of those who say that they will mourn for the Yezer ha-Ra' does not seem plausible. Why should one mourn for the Yezer ha-Ra'? On the contrary, one ought to rejoice over the death of the Yezer-ha-Ra'. However, the mourning can be explained in accordance with the statement of R. Judah. He said that when the Messiah will come, the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the Yezer ha-Ra' before the righteous as well as the wicked, and will slaughter him before their eyes. To the righteous the Yezer-ha-Ra' will appear like a high mountain, and to the wicked he will appear as a small hair. The righteous will weep with great joy, and the wicked will weep with great pain. The wicked will cry: 'Woe unto us that we have not been able to master the Yezer ha-Ra', which is as small as a hair.' And the Holy one, blessed be He, will also wonder."

Rab Ashi says, at first the Yezer ha-Ra' seems like a delicate thread, but it gradually becomes stronger until it is as strong as a rope. And why does it get so strong? I will tell you. If you do its will it leads you entirely astray and grows strong within you, and if you give it a finger it desires to take the whole hand. As the Gemara says: "There is a member in the human body (meaning thereby the evil inclination), which the more you satisfy the more hungry it becomes. But if you do not do its will and do not satisfy its hunger, it becomes tired of such a person and ceases to lead him astray. But if you satisfy it and do its will, it becomes more hungry in that person, and the more he yields to it the more it leads him astray and refuses to let go."

Therefore every man should starve out the evil inclination and not do its will, for then it will desist and the person will have the privilege of sitting among the righteous, and the evil inclination will appear to him as a high mountain.