to snort with indignation: to give loud, audible vent to strong displeasure, whether as a stern command, an angry scolding, or a surge of inner outrage
The picture behind this word is a horse snorting. In everyday Greek it described the loud blast of breath from a warhorse straining at the gate, and by extension the hot, audible anger of a person or a god. Whenever the New Testament uses it, that snort of indignation is somewhere in the sound of it.
The word turns up in three slightly different situations, but they are shades of one thing, not separate meanings:
- a stern, growling command, where the heat of the feeling sharpens an order to keep silent
- an angry scolding aimed at a person, as when onlookers snap at the woman who poured out costly perfume
- a wave of indignation felt inside, when Jesus seethes within himself at the tomb of Lazarus
The hardest place is that tomb. Older English Bibles say Jesus was "deeply moved" or that he "groaned," but most scholars now judge that far too gentle: the word points to anger or outrage, not tender sorrow. What Jesus is angry at is genuinely debated (death itself, the evil behind it, or the unbelief around him), and the Gospel may leave it open on purpose. Either way, the tears at the grave sit alongside a snort of wrath, not in place of it. Note that the ordinary Greek word for a rebuke (ἐπιτιμάω) carries no such heat, and that right beside this word John says Jesus "troubled himself" (ταράσσω), a separate word for being shaken within.
Nuances
If Jesus's emotion at Lazarus's tomb is anger, what he is angry at: death itself, the evil powers behind death, the unbelief of the mourners, or something the Gospel deliberately leaves unspecified.
- contestedAnger at death itself, the enemy Jesus is about to overthrow.; B. B. Warfield, 'On the Emotional Life of Our Lord' (1912); J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John (NICNT)
- contestedAnger at Satan and the powers of evil that stand behind death.; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible); Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary; George R. Beasley-Murray, John (WBC)
- contestedAnger at the unbelief of Mary, Martha, and the mourners.; Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary
- contestedThe Gospel deliberately leaves the object of the emotion unspecified.; Gail R. O'Day, The Gospel of John (New Interpreter's Bible); Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary (NTL)
Disputed
Whether ἐμβριμάομαι at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:33, 38) denotes anger and indignation or a gentler being deeply moved with grief or sympathy.
- majorityThe word denotes anger or indignation; reading it as grief or sympathy is lexically indefensible.; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St John, vol. 2; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John, 2nd ed.; D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC)
- minorityThe verb can also carry a broader sense of being deeply moved or strongly stirred, which some judge to fit the grief of the scene.; BDAG, s.v. ἐμβριμάομαι (sense 3, 'be deeply moved')