Ephesians Chapter 4 verse 26 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 26. - Be ye angry, and sin not. Quotation from the Septuagint version of Psalm 4:5. Anger, the feeling and expression of displeasure, is not wholly forbidden, but is guarded by two checks. Our Lord did not make anger a breach of the sixth commandment, but being angry with a brother without cause. The first check is to beware of sinning; to keep your anger clear of bitterness, spite, malevolence, and all such evil feelings. The second is, Let not the sun go down on your irritation; examine yourself in the evening, and see that you are tranquil. Eadie quotes Thomas Fuller: "St. Paul saith, 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,' to carry news to the antipodes in another world of thy revengeful nature. Yet let us take the apostle's meaning rather than his words - with all possible speed to depose our passion; not understanding him so literally that we may take leave to be angry till sunset; then might our wrath lengthen with the days, and men in Greenland, where day lasts above a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope of revenge. And as the English, by command of William the Conqueror, always raked up their fire, and put out their candles when the curfew bell was rung, let us then also quench all sparks of anger and heat of passion." It is especially becoming in men, when about to sleep the sleep of death, to see that they are in peace and charity with all men; it were seemly always to fall asleep in the same temper.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(26) Be ye angry, and sin not.--A quotation from the LXX. version of Psalm 4:4. Anger itself is not sin, for our Lord Himself felt it (Mark 3:5) at the "hardness of men's hearts;" and it is again and again attributed to God Himself, in language no doubt of human accommodation, but, of course, accommodation to what is sinless in humanity. In the form of resentment, and above all of the resentment of righteous indignation, it performs (as Butler has shown in his sermon on "Resentment") a stimulating and inspiring function in the strife against evil. But it is a dangerous and exceptional weapon: and hence the exhortation "sin not," and the practical enforcement of that exhortation in the next clause.Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.--In this command (for which a Pythagorean parallel may be found) St. Paul gives a two-fold safeguard against abuse of even righteous anger. (1) It is not to be prolonged beyond the sunset--beyond the sleep which ends the old day and leads in the freshness of the new, and which by any godly man must be prepared for in commendation of himself to God, and in prayer for His forgiveness, "as we forgive those who trespass against us." (2) It is not to be brooded over and stimulated; for the word "wrath" is properly self-exasperation, being similar to the "contention" of Acts 15:30, described as alien to the spirit of love in 1Corinthians 13:5. It is that "nursing of wrath to keep it warm," which can be checked even by those who cannot control the first outburst, and which constantly corrupts righteous indignation into selfish personal anger, if not into malignity.