Anger

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

Cain's anger is named, and God speaks to him about what he will do with it rather than about having it. The warning is that sin is crouching at the door and that he can master it. The murder comes in the next verse.

And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

God's own self-description at Sinai, given after the golden calf. Slow to anger means slow, not incapable: the same sentence keeps mercy for thousands and says the guilty are not simply cleared. Anger belongs here to justice rather than to loss of control.

And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Jonah is furious that Nineveh was spared and says he does well to be angry. God does not take the feeling from him; he questions its proportion, setting the withered plant Jonah pitied against a city of a hundred and twenty thousand people.

He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.

An observation about how life usually runs rather than a rule. Slowness to anger travels with understanding, haste of spirit with folly. Proverbs reports tendencies, and this one says nothing about whether a particular anger is warranted.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

A practical note about speech in a quarrel: the tone of the reply shapes what comes next. Like every proverb it describes what commonly happens, and a soft answer sometimes fails to turn away wrath at all.

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.

Jesus looks around at his critics with anger, grieved at their hardness, and then heals the man they were watching him over. The anger is reported without a word of disapproval, and it is aimed at people guarding a rule while a disabled man stands there.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.

A line borrowed from Psalms 4 in its Greek form. It assumes anger will happen and sets two limits on it, not sinning in it and not carrying it past sundown. The subject is what anger is allowed to become, not whether it is felt.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Slow to wrath sits between swift to hear and slow to speak, in a letter about how a congregation talks to itself. The reason given is narrow and worth reading exactly: human anger does not produce the righteousness of God.