HEBREW WORD STUDY – CRUEL, WRATH, ANGER – ANEPH CHARAH KAZAR אנפ כרה כזר
Isaiah 13:9: “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.”
It is so easy to use the words cruel wrath and fierce anger to scare you into salvation or church attendance and paying tithes. To pay your tithe out of fear that God will be wrathful and angry with you has a word in English, it is called extortion and extortion is illegal, both in heaven and earth.
Let’s look at this word cruel. It is ‘akazari in the Hebrew from the root word kazar which means to be valiant, daring and courageous. Such a fearless person can be a terrible foe to face. Such a foe can be relentless and capable of doing things a normal person who i fearful for their lives would not do. It is like a person who has nothing to lose and such a person is capable of committing horrendously cruel acts. But just because someone is valiant and courageous does not make them a cruel person.
We do not need to apply the word cruel to ‘akazari. I would go with fiercely protective (wrath). Like a Momma bear protecting her cubs. There is no anger or hatred there, just an instinctive nature of self-defense for one’s young. Now to look at this word wrath. That is a scary word, particularly when applied to God. No one wants to face the wrath of God. Wrath is bad, terrible. How can we associate the English word wrath with a loving God? The word wrath is charon from the root word charah. It can mean anger and wrath. It is often used to express displeasure. Charah in its Semitic root is used for a raging fire. Charah is merely a picture. What is the picture of a raging fire when applied to an emotion? It can be anger but it can also be other emotions, sexual rage, raging fear, raging passion, consuming passion. There is any number of ways to render this depending on the context. Much of this context depends on how you view God. If we are to view Him as perfect in love, a love that cast out all fear then I don’t think the word wrath is our best choice.
Then we have fierce anger. The word for fierce is ’ebrah which comes from the root word ebar and in its Semitic root, it is a word used when a river overflows its banks. It has the idea of overwhelming, all-encompassing. Since the translators already decided to make God out as this out of control angry, wrathful God laying waste to the laid it was not a difficult decision to use the fierce. I prefer to go with the original intent of the word ‘ebrah and call it overflowing (anger). The word anger in Hebrew is also not a clearly defined word. It is the word ‘aneph. It means to snort. It comes from the snorting of a camel. Why does a camel snort? There are many reasons. Yes, he could be angry and snort. But he will also snort when forced to do something he does not want to do, he could snort out of frustration. A camel will snort in grief if its mate dies or calf dies. It will snort when it is in heat and desires an intimacy. But then we already decided that we have an angry God so we use the word anger.
Here is how I would translate this passage although the church would find it very unacceptable, these English words fit the Hebrew just as much as the one in your English Bible fits. My rendering would be: “The day of the Lord cometh (He will be) courageous and filled with overwhelming determination and consuming passion to lay the land waste”. This is a very brave act and shows the determination of God to rescue His people for He is willing to destroy the land that He created. He will sacrifice His creation for His people and he will destroy the sinner.
We have two more words to look at here, destroy and sinners. The word destroy is shamad which means to destroy and exterminate. But shamad in its Semitic origins means to being a conclusion, closure, and ending. The word sinners is chatah which is an archer’s term for missing the target. In other words, this day of the Lord is a time of closure, bringing to an end the rule of those who cannot hit the target of God’s laws.
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