“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

-Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion”

Earlier this week, I listened to a debate between Ben Shapiro, an outspoken follower of Judaism, and atheist Alex O’Connor. The overall discussion centered around the question of whether or not religion is good for society. At one point in the debate, Alex, citing various Old Testament passages, challenges Ben on what appear to be contradictions in the moral commands and actions of God, where God either commands, or commits genocide.

(To listen to this article click the play button below)

Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Alex O’Connor are not the only ones who struggle with certain behaviors and commands of God in the Old Testament. In fact, many Christians struggle to reconcile the loving God they believe in with the “angry” God they see portrayed through passages like the flood narrative (Genesis 6-9), and the conquest of Canaan (Joshua).

The question is not “does God get angry?” but rather “why does God get angry?” It would be impossible to break down every account where people ask questions of God’s wrath. That being said, I believe we can gain a better overall understanding of why God gets angry by looking at the word “anger” in the book of Exodus. Once we have done so, we gain access to a set of principles that underlie each “angry” action or command of God.

Defining “Anger”

Before we can begin to trace the usage of “anger” in Exodus, we need to have an understanding of how the Hebrew word is defined and translated in our English versions.

The Hebrew word for anger that we are observing today is translated a couple of different ways. First, we see the word translated most often, and rather straightforwardly, as “anger” or “wrath”. It is in the second set of translations that the word becomes quite interesting. The word “anger” is also translated as “face”, “nostril”, “nose”, “forehead”, and “countenance” (I told you it got interesting!).

The movie “Inside Out” helps us to understand this second set of translations rather well. In the movie, the embodiment of anger is shown cartoonishly erupting with fire from his head whenever his rage has boiled over.

For the Jewish people, anger was expressed through the face, and specifically, their nose (remember that the next time you sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer this Christmas).

Hang on to this understanding of the word, it’ll become important for our study later.

“Anger” in Exodus

There are ten occurrences of the word “anger” in the book of Exodus. We’ll tackle them in order of appearance.

First Occurrence

The first occurrence of the word shows up in Exodus 4:14:

“Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.”
(ESV)

This occurrence shows up during the exchange between Moses and God (through the burning bush; Exodus 3-4). To understand why God gets angry here, we need to know 1) why this discussion is even happening in the first place and 2) what Moses’ response has been throughout the back-and-forth with God.

Immediately preceding the discussion with Moses is a section that provides context not only for that discussion, but also for the Exodus event as a whole:

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.”
(Exodus 2:23)

God receives a cry from the Israelites because of the injustice that they are facing. As we study through Exodus, we come to understand these truths: that God hates injustice, and works to address it. His plan to address the injustice being done to Israel? Raise up Moses to lead His people out of Egyptian oppression.

Throughout Exodus 3 and 4, God asks Moses to rescue His people from their slavery. Five times God asks, and five times Moses provides an excuse as to why he cannot lead Israel. It is after this fifth excuse that God gets angry.

In our first occurrence of the word “anger”, God’s anger is kindled as a result of Moses’ stubborn refusal to aid in the bringing of justice.

Second Occurrence

Our second occurrence of the word “anger” shows up at the pronouncement of the final plague in Exodus 11:8:

“And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’ And after that I will go out.” And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger.”

In this text, it is Moses who gets angry after dealing with Pharaoh. What does this have to do with God’s anger? This second occurrence builds on the first, with Moses getting similarly upset over the obstruction of justice for the people of Israel.

Third Occurrence

Our third occurrence of the word “anger” highlights the “nostril” translation of the word:

“At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up;
the floods stood up in a heap;
the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.”
(Exodus 15:8)

This occurrence here comes in “The Song of Moses” to God as he recaps all the Lord has done. Nothing new is added to our understanding of the word, as this is simply a summation of the events leading to Israel’s exodus of Egypt.

Fourth Occurrence

The fourth occurrence of the word “anger” isn’t seen until Exodus 22:24:

“and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.“

This is the kind of verse that we may read and struggle with. Here we have God speaking to the people of Israel and threatening to completely decimate them in His wrath…but why? The previous verses help provide much needed context:

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.”
(Exodus 22:21-24)

When we zoom out, we see that this fierce expression of God’s anger is, surprise, a response to injustice! At this point of the book of Exodus, God is laying out His expectations for His people. One of those expectations is that they remember the time of their injustice, and how God rescued them. The other expectation is that they not continue the cycle of that injustice, but rather provide for and take care of the sojourners, widows, and orphans among them.

Our fourth occurrence, repeats the theme of Exodus that God is concerned with providing justice to the oppressed and adds to it a clear directive that God wants His people to be involved in the disseminating of that justice to the world.

Occurrences Five through Nine

Occurrences five through nine all appear in Exodus 32. Five, six, and seven show up in verses 10-12 in another exchange between God and Moses:

“Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
(Exodus 32:10)

God’s anger here is kindled as a result of the creation of the golden calf, and more specifically, what this golden calf represents: the departure of God’s just commands (Exodus 32:7-8).

Moses’ response to God’s anger is a great one, because it so beautifully illustrates the kind of response we are often tempted give to God concerning His actions in the Old Testament:

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.”
(Exodus 32:11-12)

In other words, Moses tells God He needs to calm down. As far as Moses is concerned, God’s anger here is unreasonable and irresponsible, at least until Moses makes his way down the mountain and gives us our eighth occurrence of “anger”:

“And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.”
(Exodus 32:19)

Moses’ response to God on the mountain was a human one. He didn’t have the full picture of what was happening below. All he could see was how God was responding, so he asked God to calm down. Once he gets a clearer understanding of what’s going on, Moses realizes the anger of God was justified, and gets angry himself at what the people of Israel have done.

The ninth occurrence is found in Exodus 32:22 and is a response from Aaron to Moses:

“And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. 
You know the people, that they are set on evil.”

I have to wonder if Moses heard this and thought, “my goodness, is that what I sound like?” seeing as this response from Aaron to him perfectly mirrors his response to God from before in Exodus 32 verses 9 and 11.

The occurrences in this chapter lay out well the struggle we have with God’s anger in the Old Testament. It shows us that we are not alone in our questioning of God’s anger, as well as the difference in reaction between God and humans on the basis of what we know. Once Moses saw what God saw, he understood the anger was justified.

Summary of the First Nine Occurrences

We can summarize the first nine occurrences in this way:

1. God is angry with Moses’ stubborn refusal to join in the bringing of justice for Israel (Exodus 4:14).
2. Moses becomes angry with Pharaoh for his stubborn refusal to allow for justice (Exodus 11:8).
3. Moses and the people of Israel recount the anger of God in bringing them justice from their oppressors (Exodus 15:8).
4. God reminds Israel of their time as oppressed people and warns them of His anger against injustice (Exodus 22:24).
5. God’s anger is questioned by Moses (Exodus 32:10-12) only for Moses to react with the same anger (Exodus 32:19) and be questioned by his servant Aaron (Exodus 32:22).

These occurrences show us that God’s anger is not random, but rather, directed specifically towards injustice, both its practice and its continued allowance. In other words, when injustice occurs, or when injustice is permitted to occur, God gets angry.

The Name of God

The tenth, and final, occurrence of the word “anger” in Exodus appears in Exodus 34:6-7, at the revealing of God’s name to Moses:

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

This section of Scripture is quoted throughout various sections of the Old Testament¹ in part or in whole, and is alluded to more times than we could layout within this article.

This description is, without a doubt, the lens through which the people of the Old Testament saw their God.

The phrase “slow to anger” is more literally translated “long of nose.” Remember when we talked about anger being described as someone’s nose becoming red? That happens to God too, but it takes him a long time.

We see this patient anger expressed in Exodus actually:

1. Moses makes several excuses about why he can’t lead Israel before God gets angry with him (and even then God continues to work with Moses to bring about the liberation of Israel).
2. God sends nine plagues to Pharaoh before bringing about the deadly tenth plague. God gives Pharaoh nine chances to repent from his wickedness and free Israel before getting angry and killing the firstborn son in each Egyptian household.
3. God even relents from the disaster He was going to bring upon Israel after the golden calf. Instead of destruction, He continues to work with these stubborn Israelites and even renews the covenant that He made with them.

Alongside this phrase of “slow to anger” is an expression of God’s “steadfast love” (mentioned twice), desire to, first, forgive sin and, secondly, punish it if it is allowed to continue without repentance.

The final occurrence of “anger” in Exodus, reminds us of what we see throughout the rest of the book. Eventually, after providing many opportunities to change, God gets angry at injustice and punishes it so that those who are being oppressed could be set free and become people who free others through the following of their just God.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the article, I suggested that the examination of “anger” throughout Exodus could help us understand the anger of God in other places. The accounts of God’s wrath, either commanded or personally committed by Him, become less challenging when we view those actions through the lens of God’s patient desire for justice. Here are a couple examples:

1. God brings about the destruction of millions in the flood, but only after patiently waiting around 1600 years² for evil people to repent from their wickedness. Eventually that wickedness increased so much that God decided to put an end to it and bring justice to righteous Noah and his family, as well as the creation itself.
2. God does command the killing and/or driving out of the various nations that make up the land of Canaan, nations that we are told as far back as Genesis 9 and 10 have deviated from God . These are people that have been allowed to exist and commit their injustices for centuries before God brings on them the punishment for their sinfulness through the form of destruction at the hands of Israel.³

As we wrestle with the actions and commands of God in the Old Testament, let us remember first, the principles of justice, patience, and love that govern God’s anger. Second, let us remember that, like Moses, we do not see what God sees and that maybe it is not the anger of God that is incorrect, but rather our evaluation of it.

-Jack Dodgen

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1. See Numbers 14:18; Psalms 86:15, 103:8, 111:4, 112:4, 145:8; Jeremiah 32:18; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3; Nehemiah 9:17, 31; and 2 Chronicles 30:9. ↩︎
2. Between Genesis 4 and 6 is somewhere around 1600 years of time according to the genealogy recorded for us in Genesis 5. ↩︎
3. Genesis 9:25 gives us the origin of the Canaanites ancestry. They come from Noah’s son Ham, the son who sins against his father almost immediately after the cleansing of the creation from sin. Genesis 10:6 tells us that the sons of Ham are: “Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan.” Nations that are issues for Israel hundreds of years later. This also applies to the nations of Babel (Genesis 10:10), Assyria (10:11), as well as the “Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites…” (10:15-18) as well as Sodom and Gomorrah (10:19). Don’t skip the genealogies folks! ↩︎