Verse explainer
Anger itself isn't the sin — nursing it overnight is where it turns dangerous.
Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
BSB"Be angry, yet do not sin." Do not let the sun set upon your anger,
The plain meaning
Paul quotes Psalm 4:4 almost word for word. The construction — a command followed immediately by a restraint — isn't permission to rage freely; it's a realistic acknowledgment that anger will arise, paired with a tight deadline on how long it may stay. The key move is verse 27, which follows: "neither give place to the devil." Prolonged anger is the open door. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown draw a sharp line here between righteous indignation — anger at genuine wrong or dishonor — and wrath, which is personal irritation curdling into resentment. The "sun going down" image is proverbial: don't let another day begin before you've dealt with it. Adam Clarke reinforces this: anger held overnight tends toward malice and revenge, states incompatible with a clear conscience. The verse does not endorse temper — it acknowledges emotion and immediately hedges it with urgency.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Clarke reads the opening clause not as license but as a conditional warning: effectively, 'if you do become angry, take care you do not sin.' He notes that sinless anger is possible only when the feeling is displeasure at what genuinely dishonors God or harms others — any narrower or more personal anger is almost impossible to keep free of sin. The sunset rule is practical urgency: anger held overnight grows into malice and revenge, which can never coexist with peace of conscience.
JFB distinguish carefully between 'anger' and 'wrath' in the Greek. Anger at dishonor done to God or injustice done to others is legitimate — it mirrors Christ's own anger in Mark 3:5. But 'wrath' (the Greek word in the sunset clause) denotes personal exasperation, the state of being a slave to one's own irritation rather than directing it with purpose. That is what must not survive the day. The deadline is proverbial for 'deal with it at once,' before resentment calcifies into something the devil can use (v. 27).
Calvin holds that Paul allows the emotion of anger only insofar as it is free from every desire to harm, every sense of personal revenge, and every excess of heat beyond what the situation warrants. The moment anger moves from a response to wrong into a passion serving the self, it has crossed into sin. The sunset instruction presses believers not to delay reconciliation — lingering resentment is already giving ground to sin.
The word behind it
The specific word Paul uses in the sunset clause — not the general word for anger (orgē) but this intensified form, meaning exasperation or provoked irritation. Strong's and Thayer's both mark it as a sharper, more personal heat than orgē. The distinction matters: Paul tolerates the category of orgē when rightly directed, but parorgismos — the simmering personal affront — is what must not outlast the day. The verse thus carries a graduated view of anger, not a flat prohibition and not flat permission.
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