Make them pay, God; have them fall by their own schemes! Scatter them in the multitude of their wrongdoings, for they are rebellious against You. Psalm 5:10 NASB Make them pay, God – With all the corruption and hatred in the world, I want the psalmist’s imperative to come true today. “Make them pay, God!” Yes,…
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, Ephesians 4:26 NASB Angry – At last we’ve returned to the citation in Psalm 4:4 (26 October 2025). Now we’ll have to look at the Greek background of Paul’s vocabulary and then determine how his rabbinic orientation modifies the term. First,…
Tremble, and do not sin; meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah Psalm 4:4 NASB Tremble – Do you suppose that Paul had this verse in mind when he wrote, “ Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” (Ephesians 4:26). Commentators seem to think so. Perhaps that’s…
We have become a disgrace to our neighbors, scorn and contempt to all round us. How long, O LORD, will You rage forever, Your fury burn like fire? Pour out Your wrath on the nations that did not know You and on the kingdoms that did not call on Your name. Psalm 79:4-6 (Hebrew Bible)…
May their table before them become a trap, and their allies a snare. May their eyes grow too dark to see, make their loins perpetually shake. Pour out upon them Your wrath, and Your blazing fury overtake them. Psalm 69:23-25 [Hebrew Bible] Robert Alter Wrath – Here are your choices: wrath, fury, indignation, anger, judgment,…
He who gives vent to anger commits as grave a sin as though he worshipped strange gods. Tractate Shabbat 105b Anger – Referring to Job 18:4, Luzzatto follows the Sages by connecting anger with idolatry. We don’t usually think like this, but perhaps we should. Stone’s commentary on Luzzatto shows us why: “[Anger] is the…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Indignation – I’m guessing that if I asked you for a definition of indignation, you’d stumble a bit. It’s not a commonly used word. We have some inkling of its meaning, but not precisely. If we…
The Lord has become like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all its palaces, He has destroyed its strongholds and multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and moaning. Lamentations 2:5 NASB Like an enemy – We live in the “God is Love” age. I’m not sure when we transitioned from “Sinners in the…
“Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I would ever forgive them. . . And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.” Hosea 1:6, 9 NASB I am not your God – Hosea is a tragic book. It is…
“Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” Jonah 3:9 NIV His fierce anger – “A better god has been discovered who never takes offense, is never angry, never inflicts punishment.”[1] If Tertullian is right, then the king of Nineveh is grossly mistaken. Too bad he made…
