18 Bible Verses About Emotions, and the Word Translators Keep Softening



  • Two lines before “Jesus wept”, John uses a Greek word for a horse snorting — anger, or close to it, at a graveside.
  • “Be angry and do not sin” is an imperative quoting a psalm; Paul puts a clock on the anger rather than a prohibition.
  • James regulates the speed of anger rather than forbidding it, and objects on practical grounds.
  • Colossians 3:15 uses the word for an umpire: peace is what settles disputes inside us, an authority rather than an atmosphere.
  • The fifteen statements of 1 Corinthians 13 are all behaviours, which is why they work on a day we feel nothing.

The shortest verse in the Bible sits two lines away from a word translators have been softening for centuries. John says Jesus wept. He also says, just before it, that Jesus was deeply moved in spirit — and the Greek behind that phrase is a word used of a horse snorting. It is anger, or something very close to it, and it is in the text. Scripture’s emotional range is wider than the verses that get handed round, and it…

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