Ephesians 4:31 · Symbol · Anger
The Words Aph and Orge
Hebrew most often names anger with aph, its word for the nose, and Greek with orge and thymos.
When the sea was driven back, Moses and the Israelites sang to the LORD, “At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up” (Exodus 15:8).
When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he became furious and beat her with his staff.
- The word
- אַף (aph), H639
- First appears
- Genesis 2:7 “Then the LORD God formed man from the…”
Summary
Beside aph, Hebrew names anger as heat, as burning and as a splinter that breaks off. In the New Testament orge most often names the wrath of God against sin, and thymos the passion that flares. The same words describe the just anger of God and the anger believers are told to put away.
- Most uses of orge speak of the wrath of God, and Mark 3:5 is the one verse where a Gospel uses it of Jesus.
- Paul tells believers to put away both thymos and orge (Ephesians 4:31).
- Trench and Thayer held that thymos flares and orge settles, while Albert Barnes saw no essential difference between them.
The Words Scripture Uses for Anger
The words for anger run through both Testaments, from Balaam's road to Paul's letters.
The Words Aph and Orge studies the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary of anger and belongs to the study of the trial of anger. A reader meets these words wherever Scripture speaks of the wrath of God, of a brother's rage, or of the temper Paul tells the church to put off.
The question it answers is what each word means and how much a single word can show. It shows how often each word stands, what the noun for the nose pictures, which words speak of heat, whose wrath the New Testament names, and how two scholars told the Greek pair apart.
Where the Berean text says that Balaam “became furious and beat her,” the Hebrew reads that the anger of Balaam burned. The verb is charah, to burn, and the noun is aph.
Balaam was riding to curse Israel for the king of Moab when the angel of the LORD stood in his road.
Where the Words Stand
Aph is the commonest of the twelve words, and chemah stands next.
| Word | Sense in the STEP Bible lexicon | Uses | One use in the Berean words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | |||
| aph, אַף, H639, noun | face: anger | 276 | Psalm 30:5, "For His anger is fleeting" |
| charah, חָרָה, H2734, verb | to be incensed | 91 | Jonah 4:4, "Have you any right to be angry?" |
| chemah, חֵמָה, H2534, noun | rage | 125 | Genesis 27:44, "until your brother’s fury subsides" |
| qatsaph, קָצַף, H7107, verb | be angry | 34 | Esther 1:12, "the king became furious" |
| qetseph, קֶצֶף, H7110, noun | wrath | 29 | Numbers 16:46, "wrath has come out from the LORD" |
| charon, חָרוֹן, H2740, noun | burning anger | 41 | Exodus 32:12, "Turn from Your fierce anger" |
| Greek | |||
| orge, ὀργή, G3709, noun | wrath | 36 | 1 Timothy 2:8, "lifting up holy hands, without anger or dissension" |
| thymos, θυμός, G2372, noun | wrath | 18 | Hebrews 11:27, "not fearing the king’s anger" |
| orgizo, ὀργίζω, G3710, verb | to anger | 8 | Luke 15:28, "The older son became angry" |
| parorgizo, παροργίζω, G3949, verb | to anger | 2 | Ephesians 6:4, "do not provoke your children to wrath" |
| parorgismos, παροργισμός, G3950, noun | anger | 1 | Ephesians 4:26, "Do not let the sun set upon your anger" |
| pikria, πικρία, G4088, noun | bitterness | 4 | Hebrews 12:15, "no root of bitterness springs up" |
charon, חָרוֹן, H2740, noun, Greek, orge, ὀργή, G3709, noun, thymos, θυμός, G2372, noun, orgizo, ὀργίζω, G3710, verb, parorgizo, παροργίζω, G3949, verb, parorgismos, παροργισμός, G3950, noun, pikria, πικρία, G4088, noun
Aph, the Nose and the Anger
Aph names the nostrils, and the Old Testament speaks of anger as heat in them.
In the STEP Bible's word-by-word glosses of aph, 225 uses read anger, 29 read the nose or the nostrils, and 21 read the face. Its first use names the nostrils into which the LORD God “breathed the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), and its first use for anger is Esau's rage against Jacob (Genesis 27:45).
The anger of God is drawn in the same organ: “Smoke rose from His nostrils” (Psalm 18:8).
For as the churning of milk yields butter, and the twisting of the nose draws blood, so the stirring of anger brings forth strife.”The proverb uses aph twice in one line, first for a nose that is twisted and then for anger that is stirred, so both senses of the word stand side by side.
The nose is still a poor key to every verse. Abigail “fell facedown” before David with the same noun and no anger in the scene (1 Samuel 25:23). Most of the verses that use it for anger draw no picture of a face at all.
Joined to the adjective for long, the dual appayim gives the phrase erek appayim, long of nostrils, which the Berean text renders slow to anger.
Heat, Burning and Breaking Out
Five more Hebrew words for anger stand in the table, and one of them is first used of Cain.
James Strong, in his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890), glosses charah as to glow or grow warm, chemah as heat and charon as a burning of anger. He glosses the verb qatsaph as to crack off and burst out in rage, and the noun qetseph as a splinter, as if chipped off.
The verb charah first stands when Cain's offering was refused, “So Cain became very angry” (Genesis 4:5).
And I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with anger, fury, and great wrath.The LORD speaks three of these words in one line against Jerusalem, aph, chemah and qetseph, so the vocabulary gathers in a single threat.
Orge, Thymos and Their Kin
The Greek nouns name the wrath of God, the anger of Jesus and the passions of people.
Of the verses where orge stands, 26 speak of the wrath of God, among them the wrath of the Lamb in Revelation 6:16. Two speak of the punishment a ruler carries out as God's servant (Romans 13:4 to 5), five of the anger of people and one of Jesus' anger in the synagogue.
Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.The verse stands here because it shows orge used of an anger that is without sin.
The five verses on human anger all warn against it. Ephesians 4:31 and Colossians 3:8 tell believers to put it off, 1 Timothy 2:8 asks for prayer without it, and James 1:19 to 20 tells everyone to be slow to it.
Ten of the verses with thymos stand in Revelation, most of them for the wine and the bowls of God's judgment.
And from His mouth proceeds a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.The verse stands here because it is the plainest place where thymos and orge stand side by side.
The command to be angry in Ephesians 4:26 uses the verb orgizo, while the anger that must end by sundown is parorgismos, a noun built on orge.
Pikria, bitterness, stands first in the list of Ephesians 4:31, ahead of thymos and orge.
Two Accounts of Thymos and Orge
The commentators part on whether the two Greek nouns name two kinds of anger.
Thymos flares and orge settlesRichard Chenevix Trench, Joseph Henry Thayer
Richard Chenevix Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament (1901), wrote that thymos “is more of the turbulent commotion, the boiling agitation of the feelings,” which either dies away or settles into orge. He called orge “an abiding and settled habit of mind.”
Joseph Henry Thayer, in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (1889), defined thymos as “anger forthwith boiling up and soon subsiding again” and orge as anger that “has arisen gradually and become more settled.”
He cited the Shepherd of Hermas for the order in which they grow, bitterness, then thymos, then orge.
Against this reading, Trench himself granted “a multitude of passages in which the two were indifferently used,” and Revelation 19:15 sets both words on one act of God.
The two nouns name one passionAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the New Testament, wrote of the word for wrath in Ephesians 4:31, “The word here does not differ essentially from anger.”
Against this reading, Paul lists thymos and orge as separate items whenever he names them together.
The Cause Decides the Anger
Hot breath, fire and a breaking splinter are the pictures Scripture gives for anger, and it uses them of the Holy One and of sinners alike. Whether a given anger is right is settled by its cause and its end, which the reader learns from the verse and never from the word alone.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament and the tagged Hebrew Bible (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible brief lexicons of Extended Strongs for Greek and Hebrew (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the glosses of James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890)
- Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, new edition with etymological notes by A. L. Mayhew (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1901), §xxxvii, pp. 123 to 127.
- Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (1889), the entries θυμός and ὀργή.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the New Testament, on Ephesians 4:31.
Keep Studying
Studies1
In this trial7
Doctrines1