Bible verses about anger

“Be angry” is an imperative

Here is the verse, in both translations we print:

“Be angry, and don’t sin.” Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath, and don’t give place to the devil.Ephesians 4:26-27 · World English Bible

The first word is orgizesthe, and the interlinear parses it as a present imperative, second person plural — the same mood and person as the don't sin that follows it. Grammatically it is a command.

What is genuinely disputed is what the command is for, and the commentators printed at BibleHub do not agree. Vincent says righteous anger is commanded and not merely permitted. Meyer takes both imperatives as real commands. De Wette and Winer read the first as permissive — be angry, I cannot hinder it, only do not sin. Poole calls it a concession rather than a command. Olshausen and Bleek resolve it conditionally: if you are angry, do not sin. We are not going to settle a reading that four centuries of commentators have left open.

But notice what none of the five readings produces. On every one of them, the sentence is not “do not be angry”. Whatever else is in dispute, that is not.

And the verse it quotes does not say “be angry”

That clause is not Paul's own. It is a quotation of Psalm 4:4 in the Greek Old Testament, where it reads orgizesthe kai me hamartanete — word for word what Ephesians has. Here is Psalm 4:4 in the two translations on this site:

Stand in awe, and don’t sin. Search your own heart on your bed, and be still. Selah.Psalms 4:4 · World English Bible

Neither of them says “be angry”. The Hebrew verb is ragaz, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as to be agitated, quiver, quake — a violent emotion that can be fear or anger depending on what is shaking you. English translators of the psalm took the awe side. The Greek translators took the anger side. Ephesians quotes the Greek.

This is the translation kind of difference, not the manuscript kind. Nothing is corrupt and nothing is being covered up: it is one Hebrew word with a wide range, and two traditions taking different halves of it. You can see the whole thing on this page without taking anyone's word for it — the quotation is above, and so is the verse being quoted.

Worth noticing while you are in Psalm 4: the next instruction is to search your own heart on your bed and be still, and four verses later comes the line we quote on our verses for when you can't sleep page.

“Slow to anger” is a description of God, and you can count it

The phrase arrives first here, and it is God saying it about himself:

The LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD! The LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,Exodus 34:6 · World English Bible

The adjective is erek, and it means simply long — Ezekiel 17:3 uses it of an eagle's long feathers. The noun beside it is appayim, the dual of aph, which BDB gives first as the nose or nostril and only then as anger, the second sense derived from the rapid breathing of rage. So “slow to anger” is literally long of nostrils: it takes a while for the breathing to change.

The adjective occurs fifteen times in the Hebrew Bible, and the split is worth having. Ten of the fifteen are about God — Exodus 34:6 first, then Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2 and Nahum 1:3, with Jeremiah 15:15 appealing to it. Four are about people, and all four are in the wisdom books: Proverbs 14:29, 15:18 and 16:32, and Ecclesiastes 7:8. The fifteenth is the eagle.

That is the order this subject actually comes in. It is said of God ten times, and asked of a person four — and three of those four are below.

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness.Psalms 103:8 · World English Bible

The King James calls this “longsuffering”, and calls something else that too

Open the King James toggle on Exodus 34:6 above. It does not say slow to anger. It says longsuffering — and that is the same English word it uses at Galatians 5:22, Ephesians 4:2, Colossians 3:12 and 2 Peter 3:9, where the word underneath is not Hebrew at all but the Greek makrothumia. Our page on patience is built on those four.

The two words are the same picture. Makrothumia is makros, long, plus thumos, temper; Thayer records it as the Septuagint's rendering of erek appayim. Long of nostrils, long of temper.

So the modern translation splits them — “slow to anger” for the Hebrew, “patience” for the Greek — and the King James keeps them joined. That is the reverse of what happens on the patience page, where the older translation is the one drawing a distinction modern English has lost. Here it is the one showing a connection modern English hides.

The angriest man in the book quotes that verse as his grievance

Jonah has just watched a city he despised repent and be spared. This is the next thing that happens:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. He prayed to the LORD, and said, “Please, LORD, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm. Therefore now, LORD, take, I beg you, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” The LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”Jonah 4:1-4 · World English Bible

Read what he is actually complaining about. He is not misquoting anything — gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness is Exodus 34:6, almost word for word, and he gives it as his reason for running away in the first place. The formula that comforts everybody else in Scripture is the thing he cannot forgive.

And God does not argue with him. He asks a question. Nothing in the reply tells Jonah his anger is a sin; it asks whether he does well to have it, which is a harder question and a different one. The book ends four verses later on another question, unanswered.

The practical ones, and what they are each about

The most-quoted verse on the subject is about the reply rather than the feeling:

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.Proverbs 15:1 · World English Bible

It is a sentence about what leaves your mouth. It says nothing about what is going on inside the person saying it, which is why it is usable when you are still furious.

So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.James 1:19-20 · World English Bible

Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger — the same phrase from Exodus, now asked of a person, with a reason attached rather than a rule: it does not produce what it is trying to produce.

One more worth opening both translations on. Proverbs 29:11 has the modern rendering saying a fool vents all of his anger, and the King James saying a fool uttereth all his mind. The Hebrew is ruach, breath or spirit — and the proverb is about saying everything you are feeling, of which anger is the usual case rather than the only one.

If the problem is somebody else's temper rather than your own, Proverbs 22:24-25 is the passage for that, and it is on our friendship page: it tells you plainly not to befriend a man given to anger, and gives the reason, which is that you will learn it.