aph

This is the Bible's most common word for anger, and most of its uses point to God. The picture behind it is physical. The same word names the nose, and an angry person was seen as one whose nose grows hot and flares, the way breathing quickens and the nostrils widen in a burst of temper. So the word does not describe a cool, settled disposition. It pictures heat flaring up, which is why it so often travels with words for burning and kindling.

When the anger is God's, it is never a fit of temper. It is his settled, righteous response to sin and covenant-breaking, real and fearful but answerable to his justice and his mercy. The Bible holds the two together: the God whose anger burns against rebellion is the same God who is famously slow to anger and quick to relent. God's anger is often pictured as heat that leaves the body, smoke and fire streaming from his nostrils, while a person's anger stays as heat inside. When the anger is a person's, the range runs from righteous indignation to sinful rage, and the wisdom writings warn against the hot-tempered person and praise the one who is hard to provoke.

Because the word is so tied to the image of the flaring nostril, Hebrew built two opposite expressions on it. To be short of nose is to be quick-tempered, and to be long of nose is to be patient and slow to anger. The second of these became one of the Bible's central descriptions of God's own character.

This is the word's literal, bodily sense: the nose, the place of breath. God breathes the breath of life into the nostrils, and a living creature is one that has the breath of life in its nostrils. The same word can name a ring worn in the nose as an ornament, or the nose set with a hook to lead away a captive.

In the two-part form meaning the two nostrils, the word reaches out to mean the whole face, the front of a person. This shows up most often in the gesture of bowing down with the face to the ground, the standard way of showing deep respect or homage before a king or before God. There the word marks the face that is lowered to the earth.

This bodily meaning is not a separate, unrelated word. It is the root picture from which the anger meaning grew: the nose that flares in a burst of breath became the everyday way of speaking about anger flaring up. The two senses sit side by side throughout the Hebrew Bible.