Anger was one topic Jesus mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount and the interesting thing is, He associated it with murder.
Before He made His famous remarks, a long history of anger-fueled violence had riddled the pages of holy writ going all the way back to the first family. It occurred often even in those early years and frequently resulted in the death of another person. It wasn’t peculiar to the so-called bad guys either. Some of the people who committed murder surprise us.
- Cain, the first-born child to the first family murdered his first sibling, Abel, and it was motivated by anger.
- Esau was so angry he wanted to kill his brother, Jacob. Fortunately the parents intervened and sent Jacob away. The resentment, however, never left. There was constant tension between the descendants of these two brothers which occasionally escalated to war.
- Jacob’s sons, motivated by resentment, planned to kill their brother, Joseph but instead sold him as a slave.
- Two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, in a state of rage, murdered all the men in an entire town because the son of the chief had raped their sister and they did this even though the perpetrator wanted to make things right.
- Moses angrily defended his people by killing an Egyptian guard. The guard was abusing Israelite slaves and killing him was Moses’ idea of deliverance.
- Later, Moses again became so enraged that he disobeyed a direct order from God, suffering the consequences personally this time. [Read more…] about Anger And Murder In Modern Society – Matt. 5
