Learning4Comfort

The Inner Being

13. Under God's anger

Scripture speaks of God's anger far more often than of human anger. I had expected those verses to be about God, and in one sense they are. But when I read them asking what the human being is doing, I found a whole inner life lived in relation to that anger. People provoke it, fear it, plead against it, read it in their ruins, bear it with and without understanding, hide from it, and turn back under it. Some come through it singing. This chapter is about them.

I hold one verse beside everything that follows, because Scripture itself puts it in the middle of the hardest book: "For the Lord will not cast off forever, for, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men" (Lamentations 3:31–33).

How it is provoked

The texts are generous about the roots of provocation. They name what was going on inside before the turn to other gods.

  • Forgetting: "You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth" (Deuteronomy 32:18).
  • Fullness: "Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked … then he forsook God who made him" (Deuteronomy 32:15).
  • A heart that turns, or is turned: "Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside" (Deuteronomy 11:16). Solomon's "heart had turned away from the Lord" (1 Kings 11:9).
  • False security: a man "blesses himself in his heart, saying, 'I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart'" (Deuteronomy 29:19).
  • Distress that drives further away: "In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the Lord — this same King Ahaz" (2 Chronicles 28:22).
  • Not remembering: "Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things" (Ezekiel 16:43).
  • Never being satisfied: "you played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied" (Ezekiel 16:28).

Whole households join in. "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough … to provoke me to anger" (Jeremiah 7:18). And the provocation turns on those who provoke: "Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame?" (7:19). Those who followed idols "became false" (2 Kings 17:15).

It is handed on. A king's sins are the sins "which he sinned and made Israel to sin" (1 Kings 14:16). "Like mother, like daughter" (Ezekiel 16:44).

And God's anger is drawn by what is done to the weak, as surely as by idols. "If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn" (Exodus 22:23–24). "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8).

Pleading, and standing in the breach

People plead with God in the face of his anger, and they do it boldly.

Abraham knows the distance, "I who am but dust and ashes" (Genesis 18:27), and asks again anyway: "Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once" (18:32). The anger he feared never came.

Moses stands between the anger and the people. God himself leaves the door open: "Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them" (Exodus 32:10). Moses does not let him alone. He argues from God's ownership of the people, from his reputation, and from his promises (32:11–13), "and the Lord relented" (32:14). He lay on his face forty days without food. What drove him was fear: "For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you" (Deuteronomy 9:19). The psalm remembers it as standing "in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath" (Psalm 106:23).

Moses also used God's own words. God had proclaimed himself "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6). Moses quoted it back: "'The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love …' Please pardon the iniquity of this people" (Numbers 14:18–19). God answered, "I have pardoned, according to your word" (14:20).

But the breach is not always filled.

  • "I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:30).
  • Even the best could only save themselves: "even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it … they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness" (Ezekiel 14:20).
  • Jeremiah, who had stood before God "to speak good for them, to turn away your wrath from them", found that "they have dug a pit for my life". He then prayed for the anger to fall on them (Jeremiah 18:20–23).

And the most surprising intercessor is the sufferer. Job's friends explained his pain by God's anger. In the end God says to them, "My anger burns against you", and "my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer" (Job 42:7–8). The man they explained by God's anger stood between them and it.

Reading the ruin

When ruin comes, people ask why. The question is expected in advance: "What caused the heat of this great anger?" (Deuteronomy 29:24). And it is answered: "It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord" (29:25). The passage ends with a limit on reading: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (29:29).

The ruin can be read rightly or wrongly.

  • Rightly, it is the first step back. Hezekiah tells his people, "the wrath of the Lord came on Judah and Jerusalem … as you see with your own eyes" (2 Chronicles 29:8). Then he says, "Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord" (29:10).
  • As God's absence: "Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?" (Deuteronomy 31:17).
  • Seen and not taken in. The survivors in Egypt saw the ruin (Jeremiah 44:2) and did what caused it.

And some of it is understood only later. "The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly" (Jeremiah 23:20). In Ezekiel, again and again, the anger is said to end in knowledge: "And they shall know that I am the Lord" (Ezekiel 5:13).

The breath that gives life is also named in his anger. "By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed" (Job 4:9). "I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath" (Ezekiel 22:21). Chapter 2 follows the breath that gives life.

Some deaths are recorded with their inner cause named:

  • "But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death" (Genesis 38:7)
  • "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error" (2 Samuel 6:7)
  • "So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord" (1 Chronicles 10:13)
  • the men who brought back a bad report of the land "died by plague before the Lord" (Numbers 14:37)

A psalm says it of a whole generation: "He made a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death" (Psalm 78:50). Sin forgiven can still be followed by a death (2 Samuel 12:13–14; Chapter 2).

Dread and trembling

Dread comes with God's anger. Isaiah describes it as a chain with no way out: "Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth! He who flees at the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit, and he who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare" (Isaiah 24:17–18). Jeremiah says the same words of Moab, and adds whose act it is: "For I will bring these things upon Moab, the year of their punishment, declares the Lord" (Jeremiah 48:43–44).

In the curse the dread is given into the heart, and it changes even the hours of the day: "In the morning you shall say, 'If only it were evening!'" (Deuteronomy 28:65–67; 10.1). Understanding itself can be dread: "it will be sheer terror to understand the message" (Isaiah 28:19). To grasp what is coming is the terror.

Ezekiel was made to show it in his own body before it came: "eat your bread with quaking, and drink water with trembling and with anxiety", because the people "shall eat their bread with anxiety, and drink water in dismay" (Ezekiel 12:18–19). The prophet trembles first, as a sign of what the people will feel.

Those who watch another fall are shaken for themselves. "They shall tremble every moment, every one for his own life, on the day of your downfall" (Ezekiel 32:10). Another's ruin becomes fear for one's own life.

Wisdom uses the same storm picture for those who refused her: "when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind" (Proverbs 1:27). There it is Wisdom who speaks, not God's anger, but the terror is the same.

The earth and the heavens tremble too. "The foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry" (Psalm 18:7). "I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah 13:13). The verses use for the mountains the words they use for people. Chapter 15 follows this.

Bearing it

Scripture gives several ways of bearing God's anger, and it does not flatten them into one.

Without knowing why. Job feels it inside: "the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison" (Job 6:4). He feels himself counted as an enemy: "He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary" (19:11). He is given no cause. Psalm 88 goes further and has no turn at all: "Your wrath has swept over me" (88:16), and its last word is darkness.

Asking for the measure. "Correct me, O Lord, but in justice; not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing" (Jeremiah 10:24). "O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath" (Psalm 6:1). The correction is accepted. Only the anger is asked to be taken out of it.

Willingly, because of sin. "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me" (Micah 7:9). The one who bears the anger expects the same God to take up his cause.

In lament, as a people. "O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?" (Psalm 74:1). "How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?" (79:5). The anger is felt as reaching even prayer: "how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?" (80:4). And, worse, as taking away the will to pray: "There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you" (Isaiah 64:7). Yet the lament still holds on: "But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter" (64:8).

From inside the ruin. Lamentations speaks with the voice of the city and of one survivor. "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" (Lamentations 1:12). "I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath" (3:1). The body is in it: "He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones" (3:4). So is the heart: "Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord!" (2:19). In the middle comes hope (3:21–22), and then the confession that God "does not afflict from his heart" (3:33). The book ends without resolving: "unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us" (5:22).

As the condition of a whole life. "For we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed" (Psalm 90:7). The answer the psalm asks for is wisdom: "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (90:12).

With grief held back, or poured out. When Aaron's sons died near the holy, he was told not to mourn, "lest you die, and wrath come upon all the congregation", "and Aaron held his peace" (Leviticus 10:6, 3). Later, when the wrath had come, mourning was commanded: "For this put on sackcloth, lament and wail, for the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned back from us" (Jeremiah 4:8).

Watching another live with it. After Uzzah died, David was angry, then afraid, and left the ark with Obed-edom. "And it was told King David, 'The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom …' So David went and brought up the ark … with rejoicing" (2 Samuel 6:12). He did not reason his way past his fear. He watched another household live near the holy and be blessed.

The heart that turns, and the heart that does not

What happens next depends on the heart.

Josiah heard the book read and tore his clothes. The answer named his heart: "because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord … I also have heard you" (2 Kings 22:19). Hezekiah's "heart was proud", and wrath came. "But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart … so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah" (2 Chronicles 32:25–26). The same heart provoked the anger and turned it.

Turning can be partial. Rehoboam humbled himself and was spared, "and he did evil, for he did not set his heart to seek the Lord" (2 Chronicles 12:14).

Distress turns people both ways. Under the judges, "the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning" (Judges 2:18). Manasseh, "when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly" (2 Chronicles 33:12). Ahaz, in the same distress, became "yet more faithless" (28:22). The texts do not say why one turns and the other does not. They set the cases side by side.

Some hearts do not take the blow in. "It set him on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart" (Isaiah 42:25). Others make themselves unable to hear: "They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law … Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts" (Zechariah 7:12).

And some cover the danger over with false peace. "You say, 'I am innocent; surely his anger has turned from me'" (Jeremiah 2:35). Prophets "say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, 'It shall be well with you'" (Jeremiah 23:17). John the Baptist meets the same thing: "do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'" (Matthew 3:9).

Returning

God calls people back, and the call is to the heart. "Yet even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments" (Joel 2:12–13). The outward signs are not refused, but the heart is what must be torn.

Returning comes with no guarantee. Joel says, "Who knows whether he will not turn and relent" (2:14). The king of Nineveh, with no promise at all, says the same: "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish" (Jonah 3:9). "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented" (3:10).

God even gives the words to return with. "Take with you words and return to the Lord; say to him, 'Take away all iniquity; accept what is good …'" (Hosea 14:2). The answer is "I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them" (14:4).

Shelter, and who can stand

Some of the time, the call is to shelter while the anger passes. "Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by" (Isaiah 26:20). That is exactly what Job had asked for: "Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past" (Job 14:13). God offers his people what Job asked.

At the end, the reverse: people call "to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb'" (Revelation 6:16). One shelter is in God; the other is from him. Isaiah: "Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty" (Isaiah 2:10), "when he rises to terrify the earth" (2:19).

"Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger?" (Nahum 1:6). The next verse answers by pointing to the same God: "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him" (1:7).

The psalmist asks a question that joins God's anger and the fear of him: "Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?" (Psalm 90:11). God's deeds are called awesome, and his enemies cringe before them. "How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you" (Psalm 66:3). "The Lord will be awesome against them; for he will famish all the gods of the earth" (Zephaniah 2:11).

Why it is held back

God gives his own reasons for restraining his anger, and two of them are about what we are.

  • "Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often … He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again" (Psalm 78:38–39).
  • "For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made" (Isaiah 57:16).
  • "For my name's sake I defer my anger" (Isaiah 48:9).
  • "I will not execute my burning anger … for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst" (Hosea 11:9).

And Paul gives the purpose of the delay: "God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance" (Romans 2:4).

For a moment

To those who come through, the anger is measured by what follows. "For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning" (Psalm 30:5). "In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:8). "You will say in that day: 'I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me'" (Isaiah 12:1).

The hand that is felt

People under God's anger often speak of his hand as heavy. "Day and night your hand was heavy upon me" (Psalm 32:4). "He has made my chains heavy" (Lamentations 3:7). I have looked at these closely, and I notice two things.

First, the texts often correct the feeling from inside. The psalmist's heavy hand came while he kept silent about his sin, and it lifted when he confessed: "I acknowledged my sin to you … and you forgave" (Psalm 32:5). The poet who felt the heavy chains is the one who says God "does not afflict from his heart" (Lamentations 3:33). The servant who said "I knew you to be a hard man" also says "so I was afraid" (Matthew 25:24–25), and the master does not accept it.

Second, the same words for the hand are used in both directions. The "mighty hand" brought Israel out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 6:21). Later God says to Israel, "I myself will fight against you with outstretched hand and strong arm, in anger and in fury" (Jeremiah 21:5).

I have found no text in which God's own heart is hardened. The one place where his inner self turns away from a people is this: "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people" (Jeremiah 15:1).

Delivered from the wrath to come

The New Testament speaks of wrath still to come, and of people who know they are delivered from it. "We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy …" (Ephesians 2:3–4). "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God" (Romans 5:9). "God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation" (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

What they do with this knowledge is not fear. They wait "for his Son from heaven … Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thessalonians 1:10). They "encourage one another and build one another up" (5:11).

Jesus speaks of a rising that ends in judgment: "those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:29). Daniel was told that some "shall awake … to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). Chapter 2 ("The body raised") sets these beside the resurrection of life. Revelation names "the second death", and its list opens with "the cowardly, the faithless" (Revelation 21:8).

It changes how they treat their enemies. "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God … To the contrary, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him'" (Romans 12:19–20). The psalmists had asked God to pour out his anger on their enemies. Here the same confidence that wrath belongs to God leads to feeding the enemy.

And it changes how they treat their own anger. "On account of these the wrath of God is coming … But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth" (Colossians 3:6, 8).

At the very end, those who have come through sing. They "sing the song of Moses … and the song of the Lamb, saying, 'Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways'" (Revelation 15:3). Others, struck by the same plagues, "cursed the name of God … They did not repent and give him glory" (16:9). The same wrath meets two kinds of heart.

What I take from this

I had thought of God's anger as something that happens to people. Reading the verses for the human side, I find that it is also something people live in relation to: provoking, pleading, reading, bearing, turning, hiding, waiting and, at the last, singing.

Two books end on an unanswered question. Lamentations ends with "unless you have utterly rejected us" (5:22). Jonah ends with God asking, "should not I pity Nineveh?" (Jonah 4:11). I leave them open, as Scripture does.

Connections:

  • feeling (10.1): fear, anger and grief under the anger
  • remembering (10.3): "in wrath remember mercy"; "this I call to mind"
  • thinking (10.4): reading the ruin; understood afterwards
  • speaking (10.5): the words given to return with
  • choosing (10.7): turning, rending the heart
  • relating to God (10.9) and to others (10.10): intercession, imprecation, leaving vengeance to God
  • what goes wrong (Chapter 12) and being made new (Chapter 14)