I find this interesting.
Exodus 4:14 Then the anger of Yahweh burned against Moses
J Ligon Duncan on the anger of the Lord. That’s very interesting. What does that mean? Does God sort of have sudden bursts of fits and rage like we do? Can we sort of tweek Him and push Him a little too far and, and then He blows up? Does He have an emotional life like ours that’s actually to a certain extent controlled and is a response to things outside Himself? If so, how can He be sovereign? Let me introduce a few terms to you. In the Bible, in the Old Testament especially, there are figures of speech called
anthropomorphisms. In those figures of speech we often refer to God, or to some activity of God, using figures of speech as if God had a body like we do. Sometimes we’ll speak of the ear of God, or the arm of God, or the hand of God, or the face of God, or the back of God. It’s very clear that those are metaphors. That’s symbolic speech, because the Old Testament as well is very clear that God is a spirit. He doesn’t have a body like we do. He is totally different. He is in an entirely different category from us. He doesn’t have a body. And so those are figures of speech in order to describe things which are really beyond the capacity of human language to describe. Then there’s a category of things in the Old Testament which we call
anthropopathisms. That’s a nice little word. It simply means not only are anthropomorphisms, like the body of the human, but there are anthropopathisms, like the emotions of a human, where human emotions are ascribed to God. What do we do with those? Is his emotional life, just like our emotional life? And again the Old Testament and the New give the answer no, His emotional life is not like our emotional life. God is a God who is deeply concerned for His people, He loves His people, but His love and what we would call His emotional life or His affective life is different from ours in that it is not vacillating, and it’s not controlled from the outside.
So what do you do with a passage like this, where it says, the anger of the Lord burned. And you can almost see the picture, you’ve told the child for the fourteenth time not to swing his elbows at the table and off goes the milk again, and the father goes, "I told you not to do that." The anger of the Lord burns. And it seems like that anger is produced by the circumstances in which the Lord found Himself. But again, I want you to see here what we have is actually an anthropopathism using human words to describe God’s activity and action, and how do I know that? Well, the Hebrew doesn’t say the Lord burned here.. Here is what the passage says. The passage literally says, "
The nose of the Lord heated up." That’s literally what the passage – if you want to be literal about it, it’s the nose of the Lord heated up. He burned with anger. My ears usually turn red. That’s what gives me away. "The nose of the Lord heated up." Notice that’s an anthropomorphic symbol. It’s a term which uses human body figures to describe God. That’s a clear tip off that this is an anthropopathism. It’s an ascription of human emotional activity to God to express what? His displeasure with Moses.
It doesn’t indicate that God is vacillating in his emotional life like we are, inconsistently controlled from the outside. But it does it does indicate that God is not an unmoved, unfeeling being. He is a God that deeply cares about right and wrong and obedience. And so His divine displeasure is described in that he burned.
Exodus 4:10-17 A Spokesman for Moses)
