What makes God angry?

Why Does God Get Angry? In the Bible God gets angry at human violence. He gets angry at powerful leaders who oppress other humans. And the thing that makes God more angry than anything else in the Bible is Israel's constant covenant betrayal.

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An Emotional God

Anger is a human emotion. It is a feeling of adrenaline that comes with increased blood flow to your muscles. Your muscles contract, your skin gets hot, and your mind focuses on the problem at hand. In fact, the main way to say you are angry in Hebrew is “your nose burned hot.” Yes, that’s right. One of the main Hebrew words for “anger” is “nose!” This Hebrew metaphor is based on our physical experience of anger: when you are angry, your face gets hot, including your nose. We’ve all experienced that sensation—the body’s response to anger. And in Hebrew, common ways to talk about anger are to say you are “great of nose” or that you have a “hot nose.” The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger [literally in Hebrew “his great nose”] is against all who forsake him. (Ezra 8:22) He poured out on them his burning anger [literally “the heat of his nose”]. (Isaiah 42:25)

...the Lord’s anger burned [literally “his nose burned hot”]. (Deuteronomy 29:27)

But God doesn’t have a nose, and he doesn’t feel heat in the way humans do, right? The literary device at play here is called anthropomorphism—taking something that is not human but describing it with distinctly human characteristics. It’s a way for us to understand God’s emotional responses, to frame them in the way that we as humans experience emotions. So while God is not human, he does get angry. And he has good reason for reacting to human behavior with anger. In fact, God wouldn’t be good if he didn’t have strong reactions to evil and injustice. But we have to be careful here. God experiencing anger doesn’t mean we can take all of our human experience with anger and apply it to God. Divine anger is not the exact thing as human anger. “The prophets never [portray] God’s anger as something that cannot be accounted for, unpredictable, irrational. It is never a spontaneous outburst, but a reaction occasioned by the conduct of humans...and motivated by concern for right and wrong.” –– Abraham Heschel, The Prophets Vol. 2, “The Theology of Pathos,” p362.

Why Does God Get Angry?

In the Bible God gets angry at human violence. He gets angry at powerful leaders who oppress other humans. And the thing that makes God more angry than anything else in the Bible is Israel’s constant covenant betrayal. All of these examples have something in common: they are all expressions of God’s anger at humanity’s idolatry. Humans don’t take seriously the fact that we are made in the image of God. Rather, we elevate power, wealth, sex, and lots of other things to the status of a god. And then, in the name of our deified ideals and idols, we create communities and institutions that neglect, marginalize, and even destroy other people made in God’s image. And all this fallout and pain caused by human idolatry makes God’s angry, and rightfully so. There are some things that are worth getting angry about.

Think of it this way. While anger can be a destructive force, there are some situations where we view anger as necessary and right. When someone sees injustice happening, getting angry is a warranted response. In fact, most of us would say that a person who feels nothing when they see terrible injustice is not emotionally or mentally healthy. Anger can be a protective energy. This is how God’s anger is expressed in the Bible. God is not a volatile angry being who loses his cool now and then. Rather, God’s anger is a measured and reasonable response to injustice and evil. So, how does the God of the Bible express his anger?

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The first thing to know about God’s anger is that it is slow. Look at how God describes his own character in Exodus 34:6. Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness. The phrase “slow to anger” in Hebrew literally means “long of nose,” as in it takes a long time for God’s nose to get hot! God is patient, and he gives people a lot of chances to rethink their decisions and change. One of the biggest villains of the Bible is Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. He is responsible for the enslavement of Israel and the attempted genocide of the Israelites’ infant sons. But despite all of this evil, God gives him ten chances to change his ways. The apostle Paul reflects on how God’s patience with humanity is so great that we as humans are apt to take advantage of it. This is why he rhetorically asks this question in his letter to the Romans: Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4).

God is patient, yes, but there is a limit to his patience.

bibleproject.com - Is the God of the Bible an Angry God? | BibleProject™

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