Anger

“After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her.” – Esther 2:1

The events in the early part of the book of Esther seem driven by angry men. In chapter one, we’re told that “the king became enraged [qatsaph, to break forth in wrath], and his anger [chemah] burned within him.” In chapter three, we read that “Haman was filled with fury [chemah].” This word chemah means literally “heat, poison that burns the bowels”—it is indeed something which both burns and fills.

Anger, I often tell the kids, is not a sin, but it is very dangerous. God has perfect anger. Jesus was angry and acted out in anger. But while their anger is righteous, when we are angry, we are often angry to a wrong degree, or over a wrong cause. Anger is indeed like fire or poison: it destroys outwardly when we lash out in ways we later regret. It consumes inwardly when we bury it inside. Anger can be a helpful tool, just like small fires help us cook, or small doses of poisons can cure: it can reveal our heart idols or areas we need to work on in our relationships, it can energize us in productive ways. But it must always be handled carefully. So we talk about techniques like how to recognize early on when we’re becoming angry, or various risk factors (hunger, fatigue) to be aware of. How to express it in okay ways if we need to. Things that escalate and de-escalate a fight. Lines we never cross: words we’re never allowed to say, things we’re never allowed to do.

Willard Harley puts it this way: “When you’re angry, you are not simply upset—you’re insane. You are not reasoning correctly because your brain is flooded with adrenaline. You think the way paranoid people think—that your spouse is your worst enemy and is deliberately trying to hurt you… Anger is deceitful: it lets you forget what really happened and offers you a distortion of the truth… When couples have tape-recorded their fights, the one having the outburst is usually surprised at what he or she said.” Angry outbursts, he says, are a form of temporary insanity: one acts irrationally, and the details are often forgotten or remembered falsely afterwards.

He may be putting it strongly, but there are traces of that here. There is this moment when King Ahasuerus remembered what he had done. Haman acts out his anger against one man by proposing genocide. In both cases, anger destroyed to the point of death: the death of a relationship, the threat of death for an entire people group. But, as we’ll see, God will work through these events to yet achieve his good purposes. That’s the amazing thing about this book: though God is never mentioned in it, His fingerprints are all over it. Even through moral ambiguity and outright sin, God is sovereign and very much present.