ḥemah

This is by far the most common use of the word. The root behind it means to be hot, so the picture under the wrath is literal heat: anger that has come to a boil and is felt as a fire inside. It is not cool displeasure but a fierce, pressing rage, the kind that flushes the face and wants to act.

The word is used both for God and for people, and the same heat is meant in each. When it is God's, it names the settled, righteous fury he pours out against sin, often paired with judgment and the language of being poured out or kindled. When it is a person's, it names hot temper, jealousy, and the rage that flares in a quarrel.

The two readings below are one meaning seen from two sides, not two different ideas. The shading that matters is simply whose anger it is, because God's burning anger is just and measured while a person's is usually the very thing the wisdom books warn against.

A smaller group of verses uses the same word for a different kind of burning. Most often it is the venom of a serpent, pictured as a hot poison that burns through the body of whatever it strikes. The arrows of Job 6:4 carry this same burning poison, and several poems set a viper's venom under the lips of the wicked to describe deadly speech.

One verse stretches the picture to the inflaming heat of wine, the fever that strong drink kindles in those who drink it.

This is the same word as the wrath meaning, not an accident of spelling. Both grow out of the idea of heat: anger is heat in the emotions, venom is heat in the body. The reason it is listed as its own meaning is practical, since a reader has to reach for an entirely different English word here, poison or venom rather than anger.