Skip to content
mannafest.faith
Read

Subject

Anger

The fire Scripture treats as real in God and dangerous in us.

Part of Topics & Trials

Also called: wrath, rage, fury, indignation, temper, provoked, hot displeasure

What Anger covers, and where it stops

This subject covers anger itself: what Scripture calls it, and when God and Jesus are angry. It also covers the limit the New Testament sets on a believer's anger. Bearing with people belongs to Patience, and releasing the debt that stirred the anger belongs to Forgiveness.

Summary

God Himself feels anger, and Scripture says so plainly. It tells a man to let his own anger go. It sets a limit on how long he may hold it, and says what comes of keeping it.

  • The King James text speaks of anger in 478 verses, in 51 of the 66 books.
  • Scripture calls God slow to anger and says He is angry with the wicked every day, and holds both at once.
  • Mark 3:5 is the one place the Gospels use the word anger of Jesus, and He healed the man in front of Him.
  • Psalm 37:8 tells a man to cease from anger, Ephesians 4:26 sets its limit at sundown, and James 1:20 gives its verdict.
  • Proverbs makes slowness to anger a mark of sense.
On this page, 12 sections

The one drawing

Across the canon

Old Testament

New Testament

The other 15 books of the canon carry none.

478 verses across 51 of the 66 books, Genesis to Revelation. A column is taller and brighter where the King James text returns to it. Each book with a verse in it opens that book.

3 passages

What anger is

Scripture shows anger before it defines it. The first three portraits are a face that falls, a brother who waits, and a fool who keeps it.

And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
Genesis 4:6KJVGod speaks to Cain, whose offering has been refused and whose face has fallen.
And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.
Genesis 27:41KJVThe narrator reports what Esau said in his heart after Jacob took the blessing.
Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:9KJVThe Preacher speaks to the reader, naming where anger settles when it is kept.

3 passages

God's anger

Scripture says two things about God's anger and holds them together. He is slow to it, and He is angry with the wicked every day.

And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
Exodus 34:6KJVGod proclaims His own name to Moses on Sinai, after Israel has made the golden calf. The King James word here is longsuffering, which is what Psalm 103:8 states as slow to anger.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.
Psalms 103:8KJVDavid sings the LORD's own character back to himself, in the words Exodus gave him.
God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
Psalms 7:11KJVDavid sings to God about God, in a psalm asking to be judged fairly.

4 passages

Christ's anger

Mark 3:5 is the one place the Gospels use the word anger of Jesus. Three scenes stand beside it. He drives the traders out of the temple in John 2, and Mark 10:14 has Him much displeased with His own disciples. Revelation 6:16 names the last of them the wrath of the Lamb.

And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
Mark 3:5KJVMark reports Jesus in a synagogue, looking at the men who are waiting to accuse Him.
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
John 2:15KJVJohn reports what Jesus did in the temple courts when He went up to Jerusalem for the Passover.
But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:14KJVMark reports Jesus speaking to His own disciples, who were turning children away.
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
Revelation 6:16KJVJohn records what the kings of the earth say when the sixth seal is opened.

3 passages

The command and its limit

Scripture gives a man's own anger three orders: let it go, settle it the same day, and know what it produces.

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
Psalms 37:8KJVDavid speaks to a man who is watching the wicked prosper and burning about it.
Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Ephesians 4:26KJVPaul writes to the believers at Ephesus about how they are to live together.
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
James 1:20KJVJames writes to scattered Jewish believers, giving the reason for his own order one verse earlier to be slow to wrath.

3 passages

What anger does

Kept anger does not stay still. Scripture follows it to a thrown spear, and to the place where Jesus ties anger to the command against murder. It ends in the list of what the flesh produces.

And Saul cast a javelin at him to smite him: whereby Jonathan knew that it was determined of his father to slay David.
1 Samuel 20:33KJVThe narrator reports what Saul did at the table when Jonathan defended David.
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Matthew 5:22KJVJesus speaks to the crowd on the mountain, taking up the command against murder.
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Galatians 5:20KJVPaul writes to the churches of Galatia, listing what the flesh produces.
Cain's unchecked anger toward his brother Abel curdles into murder — the Bible's first case study in where the fire of anger leads unrestrained.
Cain's unchecked anger toward his brother Abel curdles into murder — the Bible's first case study in where the fire of anger leads unrestrained.
Public domainPeter Paul RubensWikimedia Commons →

Anger in Scripture, in full

Anger in Scripture appears both as righteous indignation against sin and injustice — God's wrath, Jesus in the Temple — and as an emotion that "slayeth the silly one" (Job 5:2). Paul tells believers to "be ye angry, and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26), guarding anger with speed, target, and duration. Scripture does not condemn anger as such but refuses to let it govern the day.

2 voices

What teachers have said

Ambrose sets Scripture against a philosopher's rule that a crime done in anger should go unpunished.

“It is said that the greatest of the philosophers granted immunity from punishment to those crimes that had been committed through anger, but the divine Scripture says better: ‘Be angry, and sin not.’ It preferred rather to cut off sin than to excuse it.”

Ambrose of Milan · On the Death of Theodosius 14

Written before 397.

Henry names the cost anger charges the angry man himself, before it reaches anyone else.

“Anger is a sin that is its own punishment. Fretful passionate people tear and torment themselves.”

Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710

Where it leads

Everything the site holds on anger

The words underneath

Each card is one Hebrew or Greek word behind anger. It gives the sense, the count across the canon, and the number in Strong's 1890 concordance.

kaas: to provoke

Hebrew · H3707
כַּעַס

Strong's entry: to trouble; by implication, to grieve, rage, be indignant

anger that provokes and vexes the soul

54 times in the Old Testament · kaas, in full →

chemah: rage

Hebrew · H2534
חֵמָה

Strong's entry: heat; figuratively, anger, poison (from its fever)

anger that burns hot and poisons like venom

125 times in the Old Testament · chemah, in full →

charah: to be incensed

Hebrew · H2734
חָרָה

Strong's entry: to glow or grow warm; figuratively (usually) to blaze up, of anger, zeal, jealousy

anger that kindles suddenly, like catching fire

91 times in the Old Testament · charah, in full →

aph: face: anger

Hebrew · H639
אַף

Strong's entry: properly, the nose or nostril; hence, the face, and occasionally a person; also (from the rapid breathing in passion) ire

anger pictured as flaring, visible breath

276 times in the Old Testament · aph, in full →

orge: wrath

Greek · G3709
ὀργή

Strong's entry: properly, desire (as a reaching forth or excitement of the mind), i.e. (by analogy), violent passion (ire, or (justifiable) abhorrence); by implication punishment

the word behind the wrath of God in Romans 1:18

36 times in the New Testament · orge, in full →

thymos: wrath

Greek · G2372
θυμός

Strong's entry: passion (as if breathing hard)

the word the King James prints as wrath at Galatians 5:20

18 times in the New Testament · thymos, in full →

467 verses

The complete list

The King James text uses the language of anger in 478 verses. 11 of them are quoted above and the other 467 stand here, book by book. 5 more verses above show anger without using one of its words, so they are outside that count. Open a book to read the references with a clause of each verse.

Genesis14
Exodus10
Leviticus2
Numbers19
Deuteronomy26
Joshua6
Judges10
1 Samuel8
2 Samuel8
1 Kings12
2 Kings13
1 Chronicles2
2 Chronicles23
Ezra5
Nehemiah6
Esther7
Job21
Psalms51
Proverbs26
Ecclesiastes2
Song of Solomon1
Isaiah34
Jeremiah42
Lamentations13
Ezekiel22
Daniel3
Hosea6
Joel1
Amos1
Jonah5
Micah2
Nahum3
Habakkuk3
Zephaniah5
Zechariah3
Matthew4
Luke5
John2
Acts1
Romans10
2 Corinthians1
Ephesians4
Colossians3
1 Thessalonians3
1 Timothy1
Titus1
Hebrews3
James1
Revelation13

Topics & Trials

The subjects beside it

Sources: verse texts: King James Version (public domain), and the complete list is gathered by word family from the same text; the quoted voices are cited with their work, and a year stands only where the row carries the work's own date. Every cited work, the sources registry →