James 1:19 to 20 · Passage · Anger
Slow to Anger
James wrote to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion, believers scattered abroad and meeting trials of many kinds.
The Greek word James uses twice for slow, bradys, stands in one other verse, where the risen Jesus tells two disciples, “how slow are your hearts to believe” (Luke 24:25).
My beloved brothers, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger,
- The passage
- James 1:18 to 26, Proverbs 15:1
- Books
- James, Proverbs
- Hold in memory
- James 1:20, Proverbs 16:32
Summary
James joins anger to listening and speaking because all three bear on how a believer receives the word of God. The proverbs he echoes had long weighed the patient man against the hot-tempered man in more than one saying. Esau's rage against Jacob, which waned over the years of Jacob's absence, shows how slowly anger can cool.
- James places his three commands between God's giving of new birth by the word of truth and the call to accept the word planted in the believer (James 1:18 and James 1:21).
- In Proverbs the man slow to anger calms strife and the hot-tempered man stirs it up, and the book ranks self-command above the taking of a city.
- James 1:19 is the one verse of the New Testament that tells believers to be slow to anger.
Listening, Speaking and Anger
Slow to Anger studies James 1:19 to 20, with the proverbs on the slow and the quick-tempered beside it, as part of the study of anger.
The question it answers is why James sets anger beside listening and speaking, and what he means when he says anger does not bring about God's righteousness. It reads the commands in the setting of James 1:18 to 26, matches six proverbs on the slow and the quick, and sets out three readings of “man's anger” with the teachers who hold them.
James has just written, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of His creation” (James 1:18).
The Slow and the Quick in Proverbs
Six proverbs speak of the patient man or the hot-tempered man, and two of them name both.
Proverbs pairs the man slow to anger with understanding and peace, and the quick-tempered man with folly, strife and transgression.
| Proverb | The slow man | The quick man |
|---|---|---|
| Proverbs 14:17 | Not named | “A quick-tempered man acts foolishly” |
| Proverbs 14:29 | “A patient man has great understanding” | “a quick-tempered man promotes folly” |
| Proverbs 15:18 | “he who is slow to anger calms dispute” | “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife” |
| Proverbs 16:32 | “He who is slow to anger is better than a warrior” | Not named |
| Proverbs 19:11 | “A man’s insight gives him patience” | Not named |
| Proverbs 29:22 | Not named | “a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression” |
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.The proverb stands here because a gentle answer is the outward side of the patience the table describes.
Three Commands and Their Ground
James moves from anger to the planted word and to a bridled tongue.
In the Greek, the first command joins tachys, quick, to hearing, and the next two join the same word for slow to speaking and to anger. The word for anger is orge.
for man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires.The verse gives the reason for all three commands, and the reason concerns what anger produces.
The next command reads, “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and every expression of evil, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save your souls” (James 1:21). The word rendered humbly is prautes, meekness.
James ends the chapter on the tongue: a man who “does not bridle his tongue” deceives his heart, and “his religion is worthless” (James 1:26).
Slow Anger in God and in Esau
The command asks of believers what Scripture records of the LORD and what time worked in one angry man.
A Teacher on Anger and Judgment
Gregory the Great read James 1:20 in his Morals on the Book of Job.
died 604 · Gregory the Dialogist
Morals on the Book of Job 5.78
Gregory taught that a mind stirred by rage counts whatever rage suggests as right.
The quotation1 quotation
“For whereas the agitated mind works up to harshness the decision of its reasoning faculty, all that rage suggests, it accounts to be right.”
Gregory the Dialogist · Morals on the Book of Job 5.78 · on James 1:20Patristic
What Man's Anger Does Not Produce
Albert Barnes, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Adam Clarke and John Calvin each read the verse differently.
All human anger, which never yields a righteous lifeAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), read the righteousness of God as “that upright course of life, and love of truth, which God requires.”
He wrote, “A man is never sure of doing right under the influence of excited feelings.”
The objection: Mark 3:5 records that Jesus looked around “with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart,” so Scripture does not set every anger outside righteousness.
Angry zeal for God's causeJamieson, Fausset and Brown; Adam Clarke
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), read the verse as aimed at “Man's angry zeal in debating, as if jealous for the honor of God's righteousness.”
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), wrote, “A furious zeal in matters of religion is detestable in the sight of God.”
The objection: James names no debate or religious quarrel in James 1:19 to 20, and his first command is about listening.
Anger that keeps a person from hearing GodJohn Calvin
John Calvin, in his commentary on James (translated by John Owen, 1855), held that wrath is condemned here “with regard to the hearing which God demands to be given to him.”
He wrote, “God cannot be heard except when the mind is calm and sedate.”
The objection: James sets anger as a third command beside speaking, and the proverbs he echoes treat anger as a fault between people.
Listen First
James puts listening before speaking and patience before anger. Where a quick temper comes with a racing heart, broken sleep or thoughts of harm, a physician's care stands beside prayer and never in its place.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the glosses of James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890)
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, translated by John Owen (Calvin Translation Society, 1855), on James 1:19 to 20.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on James 1:20.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on James 1:20.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on James 1:20.
- Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, 5.78 (Library of the Fathers, Oxford, 1844 to 1850)
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