to burn hot with anger: for a feeling, almost always anger, to catch fire and blaze up in someone
The root idea is growing hot. In the Hebrew Bible this verb is never used of an actual fire; literal burning and scorching belong to a look-alike sister verb (חָרַר). Here the heat is always a feeling, and the feeling is nearly always anger.
The commonest way of saying it names anger itself as the thing that burns, using the word for the nose (אַף), which doubles as the ordinary Hebrew word for anger. So the sentence reads that a person's nose, meaning their anger, grew hot against someone, a picture drawn from the flushed face and hard breathing of rage. God and people are described the same way, with the same words. The verb reports that the heat rose; it says nothing about whether the anger was deserved.
A shorter form of the phrase leaves the word for anger out and says only that it burned "to" someone. This is where the word turns slippery. Usually it is still plain fury, but where the surrounding lines speak of a fallen face or a wish to die, it reads more like bitter distress. Ancient translators already split over it: the Greek Old Testament repeatedly chose a verb meaning "to grieve" in exactly these places, while the Latin kept "was angry."
Three uses stand a little apart from the rest:
- a warning against working yourself into a heat over what wrongdoers get away with (Psalm 37; Proverbs 24:19)
- a description of enemies inflamed against someone (Isaiah 41:11; 45:24)
- one line about rebuilding Jerusalem's wall where the heat looks like zeal for the job rather than anger at a person (Nehemiah 3:20)
Nuances
Whether the verb at Genesis 4:5 reports Cain's hot anger or his dejection.
- majorityHot anger. This is the reading of the Latin tradition and of most modern versions, and Cain is treated as the paradigm case of anger as a moral threat in Genesis.; Matthew R. Schlimm, From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Language and Ethics of Anger in Genesis, Siphrut 7 (2011)
- minoritySorrow or dejection rather than anger, since the following clause reports that Cain's face fell and the Septuagint rendered the verb with λυπέω, "to grieve."; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. חרה; Septuagint, Genesis 4:5 (λυπέω)
Whether Jonah's reaction at Jonah 4:1 is anger, grief, or both.
- majorityAnger. The Latin version renders it unambiguously as anger, and most modern translations follow.; Vulgate, Jonah 4:1 (iratus est, "he was angry")
- minorityGrief and confusion. The Septuagint rendered the clause as being greatly grieved and confounded, and used the same word for grief again at Jonah 4:4 and 4:9.; Septuagint, Jonah 4:1 (ἐλυπήθη λύπην μεγάλην καὶ συνεχύθη); Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, Anchor Bible 24B (1990)
What the verb contributes at Nehemiah 3:20, where it stands directly beside the verb "repaired" and has no object of anger.
- majorityIt describes zeal: Baruch repaired his section with burning earnestness, the heat of the root turned into ardour for a task.; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. חרה; Ernst Bertheau, Die Bücher Esra, Nechemia und Ester, Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament
- minorityThe text is uncertain and the form may not belong here at all: the Latin version read a word for "on the mountain," implying a different Hebrew reading.; Vulgate, Nehemiah 3:20 (in monte, "on the mountain")
Disputed
Whether the burning imagery of the phrase "his nose burned" was still a live, felt metaphor for ancient speakers or a lexicalized idiom whose fire was no longer heard.
- contestedThe heat is a live conceptual metaphor grounded in the physiology of rage (the flush of the face, the snorting breath), and in poetic theophany God's anger is pictured as fire breathing from the nose.; Paul A. Kruger, "A Cognitive Interpretation of the Emotion of Anger in the Hebrew Bible," Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 26/1 (2000) 181-193; Zacharias Kotzé, "Humoral Theory as Motivation for Anger Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible," Southern African Linguistic and Applied Language Studies 23/2 (2005) 205-209; Deena E. Grant, Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 52 (2014)
- contestedIn the prose formulae the expression is a fixed idiom whose fire was no longer felt, comparable to English "fuming," and cognitive readings risk over-reading the imagery.; Paul A. Kruger, "Emotions in the Hebrew Bible: A Few Observations on Prospects and Challenges," Old Testament Essays 28 (2015) 395-420