Good for nothing (RACA) (4469) (RACA = Aramaic word equivalent to Hebrew rebq = senseless, empty headed man, worthless, term of utter vilification) refers to a vain, empty (empty headed) or worthless fellow and was used as a term of reproach and utter contempt by the Jews in the time of Christ. A few sources say raca is derived from a term for spit, but most feel that is probably not the correct etymology. Raca appears often in the Rabbinic literature. The idea is that of "empty head ("airhead")," or "numbskull," or "one who thinks like a donkey." In that sense Raca expresses dehumanizing contempt which seeks to strip the person of their dignity by viewing them as worthless! To say “Raca” to a person was like saying, “You idiot!” Smith's Bible Dictionary - Raca denotes a certain looseness of life and manners, while ‘fool,’ in the same passage, means a downright wicked and reprobate person.” G. H. Waterman - The Aramaic word rêqa is used figuratively in rabbinic literature as a term of contempt, meaning “worthless, good for nothing, stupid.” For example, the MIDRASH on Eccl. 9:15 states that NOAH said to his contemporaries, “Woe, ye foolish ones [rqyy]! Tomorrow a flood will come, so repent” (Qoh. Rab. 9.17). The TALMUD relates that “once when a certain pious man was praying by the roadside, an officer came by and greeted him and he did not return his greeting. So he waited for him till he had finished his prayer. When he had finished his prayer he said to him: Fool [ryq]!” (b. Ber. 32b). Note also that a Greek papyrus letter dating from the 3rd cent. B.C. already uses the form rhacha as an insult (cf. BDAG, 903, which includes a summary of patristic interpretations; for further discussion, see J. Jeremias in TDNT, 6:973—76). (The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume 5, Q-Z) BDAG - a term of abuse/put-down relating to lack of intelligence = numskull, fool TDNT - The Aramaic term expresses disparagement accompanied by anger and contempt. Addressed to the foolish, thoughtless, or presumptuous person, it means “blockhead,” and is the most common term of abuse in Jesus' day. Vine - RAKA (4469) is an Aramaic word akin to the Heb. rêq, empty, the first a being due to a Galilean change. In the A.V. of 1611 it was spelt racha; in the edition of 1638, raca. It was a word of utter contempt, signifying empty, intellectually rather than morally, empty—headed, like Abimelech’s hirelings, Jdg. 9:4 (Ed: cp Jdg 11:3, 2Chr 13:7 - where "worthless" = Hebrew req, 07386, derived from riq = to make empty or empty out) and the “vain” man of Jas. 2:20. As condemned by Christ, Matt. 5:22, it was worse than being angry, inasmuch as an outrageous utterance is worse than a feeling unexpressed or somewhat controlled in expression; it does not indicate such a loss of self—control as the word rendered “fool,” a godless, moral reprobate. (Raca - Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words) English synonyms with a similar idea include nitwit, blockhead, numbskull, bonehead or brainless idiot. Clearly raca expressed utmost contempt for an individual's intelligence (or supposed lack of)! Africa Bible Commentary - These Jewish insults are similar to the African ‘son of a dog’. Adam Clarke - Raca signifies a vain, empty, worthless fellow, shallow brains, a term of great contempt. Such expressions were punished among the Gentoos by a heavy fine. A. B. Bruce: "Raca expresses contempt for a mans head-you stupid! Moros expresses contempt for his heart and character-you scoundrel" Although I could not find this in any other references (so it may not be accurate), the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges says raca is "a word of contempt, said to be from a root meaning to spit." George Wood - Raca—that is equivalent to murder in God's eyes. Raca is an epithet. Its use is similar to a racial expletive in modern times. It serves to insult someone. Chip Bell - "Raca sounds like spitting and means “empty head”." Sam Storms - By “insult” (i.e., saying “Raca”, an Aramaic term meaning “empty [headed]”) Jesus refers to the mocking of an individual’s intelligence. This isn’t merely a casual reference to a person’s IQ or the equivalent of our calling someone a “nitwit” or “blockhead” or “boneheaded dufus.” He has in mind an angry and dismissive belittling that is designed to embarrass and humiliate. John Gill - Raca is expressive of indignation and contempt; it was used as a term of reproach. Some derive it from qqr to "spit upon"; as if the person that used it thought the man he spoke to deserved to be spit upon, and treated in the most contemptuous manner: but rather the word signifies "empty" and "vain", and denotes a worthless, empty headed man; a man of no brains; a foolish, witless, fellow. Ray Pritchard - “Raca” is an Aramaic insult that means something like “You worthless son of a motherless goat.” (Not a literal translation!) Or it might mean “You brainless blockhead” or “You idiot” or “You moron.” I think you get the picture. You said “Raca” when you were angry and wanted to insult a person. It was an attack on a person’s self-worth and dignity. The same is true of “You fool!” It’s an attack on a person’s character. But what about the person who says, “I wish you were dead.” God takes that seriously. Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Do you realize that saying “I wish you were dead” is really a prayer to God? You are speaking death into a particular situation. That’s a way of murdering people! Some of you are so good at it that you ought to be hired by the Mafia as professional hit-men! You are so fast and so clean about it that you can kill two people on the way to the water fountain and step over their corpses on the way back to your desk. No blood! But you’re a murderer in God’s eyes! You’ve killed with your abusive, unkind speech. Adrian Rogers on RACA - What is the Lord saying? The Lord says, "If your heart is a malevolent heart that burns with anger toward other people, if you look down upon any human being made in the image of God, and you speak contemptuously, if you have contempt and abhorrence of a human being, if you say, "Raca, you fool," the Lord wrote down in Heaven, "Murder, murder, murder." The anger that people have—the anger! You see them, at intersections or wherever, get in a little traffic snarl, and see them just express—the blood rushes to the face—and they'll beep the horn, and they'll get so angry that you know that if It were not against the law, they would take a life—if it were not against the law; the only thing that keeps them from doing it here—murder. Jeremias - The structure of Mt. 5:21-22 shows that the reference is to three ascending forms of the same penalty rather than to three courts, and that the sins that are equivalent to murder are all sins of the tongue arranged in a kind of crescendo: Whoso is angry, says "blockhead," or says "fool," deserves to be punished with death, to be condemned to death, to suffer death in hell. This paradox whereby apparently harmless words are put on a par with murder shows how very serious sins of the tongue are in God's eyes, and it carries a warning against ill feelings that may seem innocuous but poison relationships. Against authenticity it is argued that there is no true crescendo from wrath to insult, but it should be noted that the speech, style, and outlook are all Palestinian and that the teaching accords with Mk. 7:15; Mt. 12:36-37. (TDNT) Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia - RACA - A transliteration of the Greek (Ed: others consider it to be of Aramaic origin) hraka in its only occurrence in the NT in Mt 5:22. The meaning is “empty” or “senseless.” It is a vernacular word of comparatively mild abuse (MM). The RSV too freely translates the passage “whoever insults his brother.” It is not as extreme a term as moros which means “foolish” or “fool,” and this idea is substantiated by noting the progressive intensity of expressions in Mt 5:22. Raca seems to cast reflection on a man’s intellectual capacity, i.e., “you ignoramus!” This concept must not be pressed exclusively, as we are warned by Jewish Enc. It does at times refer to lack of morals as well. (Pfeiffer, C. F., Vos, H. F., & Rea, J. 1975; 2005. The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia. Moody Press) International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - RACA - Jesus’ explication of the true meaning of the law in Mt. 5:21ff moves from the prohibition of murder to the prohibition of insult. Both the murderer and the person calling another “Raca” count the object of their act, a person made in the image of God, as of little worth. That the correlation of relationships to people with the relationship to God is operative here too is clear from the subsequent saying about leaving the altar to make peace with an offended brother. Gk raká is a transcription of the Aram rêqa. This Aramaic insult, in turn, is related to Heb rêq, an adjective meaning “empty,” to which the vocative ending is added (TDNT, VI, 974). It very likely meant “empty-headed one” and thus something like our “blockhead.” Like “blockhead,” raká was thought a harmless insult even though it expressed disparagement and sometimes contempt. By putting such an insult on the same level as murder, Jesus clearly demands that insults, even “harmless” insults, be avoided. (Bromiley, G. W. 1988; 2002. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised 2:856-857. Wm. B. Eerdmans) Jewish Encyclopedia (1901) - RACA (REKA): Noun formed from the adjective “re” (= “empty”), and applied to a person without education and devoid of morals (comp. Judges 11:3). The noun occurs several times in the Talmud; e.g., Ta‘an. 20b; Ber. 22a. 33b; Gi?. 58a; B. B. 75a; Pesi. R. 28 (ed. Friedmann, p. 54a). The plural “reaya” is found in Ecclesiastes Rabbah. “Raca” occurs also in the New Testament (Matt. 5:22), where it is equivalent to an expression of contempt. (Raca - The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia) Max Wilcox - RACA. An expression of reproach used as an example by Jesus in one of his teachings (Matt 5:22). The RSV translates this term as “insult.” In Matt 5:22a “raca” (Gk rhaka) is basically parallel in meaning to more (Fool!) in v 22b, and is thus a term of abuse or contempt. The key difference is that while the second of these is a Greek word, the first is not. It seems in fact to be the emphatic state of Aram r(y)q, meaning “empty,” and hence “worthless,” “good for nothing.” As a term of contempt, it is found in the Talmud and Midrash, e.g., b. Ber. 22b, “. . . she said to him, Numskull! (= ryq) . . . ;” and Eccl. Rab. to 9:15, “Woe to you, worthless fellows (rqyy), tomorrow the Flood is coming . . .” (that is, these are the men of the flood generation). The word was first noticed as a Semitism by John Lightfoot (1684), who gave a series of examples from Talmudic and Midrashic literature. The context in Matt 5:22 supports the identification of “raca” as a Semitism, in that it refers in turn to the person who is wrathful with his fellow, calls him “Numskull” (raqa) or “fool,” as worthy of “the judgment,” “the Sanhedrin,” or “the Gehenna of fire.” The use of “raca” in Matt 5:22, without any following explanation or translation in Greek, was held by Jeremias to indicate that Matthew’s audience could cope with some Aramaic. (The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary 5:605) Raca - Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament Ellicott - As far as the dictionary sense of the word raca goes, it is the same as that of the “vain fellows” of Jdg 9:4, Jdg 11:3; Pr 12:11; but all words of abuse depend for their full force on popular association, and raca, like words of kindred meaning among ourselves, was in common use as expressing not anger only but insolent contempt. The temper condemned is that in which anger has so far gained the mastery that we no longer recognize a “brother” in the man who has offended us, but look on him with malignant scorn. (Ellicott) Phil Newton on Mt 5:21-22 - To begin with, Jesus is not giving stages or degrees leading to murder but showing the different manifestations of the same heart attitude. "Anger" may manifest itself in lashing out, verbally or physically attacking someone, or in vitriolic behavior. What we sometime call ranting and raving may be signs of anger. It may also be what has been termed passive-aggressive in which the angry person may not say anything ugly but treats the other person or persons with personal contempt. It may be the silent treatment or even manifest in what he does not say to another person when he should be commenting in a helpful, relational fashion. "Anger" often shows up in a spousal relationship in which one spouse may demonstrate anger at the other by silence, non-involvement, lack of kindness and gentleness, disregard for showing tenderness and concern. It happens in parent-child relationships and even in work settings. The slow, seething of the angry person looks for ways to express animosity as much by what he does not do as by what he does. "You good-for-nothing," or raca is Aramaic for a term meaning "empty-head" or what we may call without a sense of levity, "numb-skull," "blockhead," or "dingbat." I suppose that we could add dozens of other names that convey the same general idea. This views the other person as inferior - so obviously, pride is part of anger's root. It is a disdainful attitude verbally expressed in insults to another. Spurgeon on RACA - Murder lies within anger, for we wish harm to the object of our wrath, or even wish that he did not exist, and this is to kill him in desire. Anger “without a cause” is forbidden by the command which says “Thou shalt not kill;” for unjust anger is killing in intent. Such anger without cause brings us under higher judgment than that of Jewish police-courts. God takes cognizance of the emotions from which acts of hate may spring, and calls us to account as much for the angry feeling as for the murderous deed. Words also come under the same condemnation: a man shall be judged for what he “shall say to his brother.” To call a man Raca, or a worthless fellow, is to kill him in his reputation, and to say to him, “Thou fool,” is to kill him as to the noblest characteristics of a man. Hence all this comes under such censure as men distribute in their councils; yes, under what is far worse, the punishment awarded by the highest court of the universe, which dooms men to “hell fire.” Thus our Lord and King restores the law of God to its true force, and warns us that it denounces not only the overt act of killing, but every thought, feeling, and word which would tend to injure a brother, or annihilate him by contempt. MacArthur adds that raca "has no exact modern equivalent. Therefore in most Bible versions, as here, it is simply transliterated. A term of malicious abuse, derision, and slander, it has been variously rendered as brainless idiot, worthless fellow, silly fool, empty head, blockhead, and the like. It was a word of arrogant contempt. (MacArthur, J: Matthew 1-7 Macarthur New Testament Commentary Chicago: Moody Press) Why is simply saying "raca" or "you fool" a sin that makes one guilty enough to even go to hell? The answer in short is that every man is made in the image of God and God does not say "raca" or "you fool". Instead what God does is say I love you and to show you how much I sent my only begotten Son (John 3:16). Paul also explains how God sees us and how he responds in light of what He sees (remember we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect!) writing that... while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (See notes Romans 5:6; 5:7; 5:8; 5:9; 5:10) Jesus is saying that in effect our "cutting words" carry out the "assassination" of the person using the weapon of the tongue and those words that proceed from a heart filled with animosity, enmity or anger. When you call another man or woman made in the image of God, you are in effect taking the place of God and when you say "raca" or "you fool" you are holding them with lower esteem than God Himself does and thus it is a grievous sin. Isn't that what one "says" when they murder another person? They are saying in essence that "Your life is worth less to me than it is to God!" And thus the murderer "takes the place" of God. Jesus exposition helps one understand Solomon's teaching that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21) ILLUSTRATION OF ANGER - One woman went to the doctor. He looked grave. She said, "What's wrong?" He said, "Madam, you have hydrophobia. You have rabies." She got out a pencil and started to write. He said, "What are you doing—making your will?" She said, "No, I'm making a list of people I'm going to bite." I believe I met her sister on one occasion. William Barclay - Here is the first example of the new standard which Jesus takes. The ancient law had laid it down: "You shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13); but Jesus lays it down that even anger against a brother is forbidden. In the King James Version the man who is condemned is the man who is angry with his brother without a cause. But the words without a cause are not found in any of the great manuscripts, and this is nothing less than a total prohibition of anger. It is not enough not to strike a man; the only thing that is enough is not even to wish to strike him; not even to have a hard feeling against him within the heart. In this passage Jesus is arguing as a Rabbi might argue. He is showing that he was skillful in using the debating methods which the wise men of his time were in the habit of using. There is in this passage a neat gradation of anger, and an answering neat gradation of punishment. (i) There is first the man who is angry with his brother. The verb here used is orgizesthai (orgizo). In Greek there are two words for anger. There is thumos , which was described as being like the flame which comes from dried straw. It is the anger which quickly blazes up and which just as quickly dies down. It is an anger which rises speedily and which just as speedily passes. There is orge, which was described as anger become inveterate. It is the long-lived anger; it is the anger of the man who nurses his wrath to keep it warm; it is the anger over which a person broods, and which he will not allow to die. That anger is liable to the judgment court. The judgment court is the local village council which dispensed justice. That court was composed of the local village elders, and varied in number from three in villages of fewer than one hundred and fifty inhabitants, to seven in larger towns and twenty-three in still bigger cities. So, then, Jesus condemns all selfish anger. The Bible is clear that anger is forbidden. "The anger of man," said James, "does not work the righteousness of God" (James 1:20). Paul orders his people to put off all "anger, wrath, malice, slander" (Colossians 3:8). Even the highest pagan thought saw the folly of anger. Cicero said that when anger entered into the scene "nothing could be done rightly and nothing sensibly." In a vivid phrase Seneca called anger "a brief insanity." So Jesus forbids for ever the anger which broods, the anger which will not forget, the anger which refuses to be pacified, the anger which seeks revenge. If we are to obey Jesus, all anger must be banished from life, and especially that anger which lingers too long. It is a warning thing to remember that no man can call himself a Christian and lose his temper because of any personal wrong which he has suffered. (ii) Then Jesus goes on to speak of two cases where anger turns into insulting words. The Jewish teachers forbade such anger and such words. They spoke of "oppression in words," and of "the sin of insult." They had a saying, "Three classes go down to Gehenna and return not--the adulterer, he who puts his neighbour openly to shame, and he who gives his neighbour an insulting name." Anger in a man's heart, and anger in a man's speech are equally forbidden. First of all, the man who calls his brother Raca is condemned. Raca (see rhaka, compare Hebrew 7386 = reyq e.g., "vain" in Jdg 9:4, 2Sa 6:20) is an almost untranslatable word, because it describes a tone of voice more than anything else. Its whole accent is the accent of contempt. To call a man Raca was to call him a brainless idiot, a silly fool, an empty-headed blunderer. It is the word of one who despises another with an arrogant contempt. There is a Rabbinic tale of a certain Rabbi, Simon ben Eleazar. He was coming from his teacher's house, and he was feeling uplifted at the thought of his own scholarship and erudition and goodness. A very ill-favoured passer-by gave him a greeting. The Rabbi did not return the greeting, but said, "You Raca! How ugly you are! Are all the men of your town as ugly as you?" "That," said the passer-by, "I do not know. Go and tell the Maker who created me how ugly is the creature he has made." So there the sin of contempt was rebuked. The sin of contempt is liable to an even severer judgment. It is liable to the judgment of the Sanhedrin (sunedrion), the supreme court of the Jews. This of course is not to be taken literally. It is as if Jesus said: "The sin of inveterate anger is bad; the sin of contempt is worse." There is no sin quite so unchristian as the sin of contempt. There is a contempt which comes from pride of birth, and snobbery is in truth an ugly thing. There is a contempt which comes from position and from money, and pride in material things is also an ugly thing. There is a contempt which comes from knowledge, and of all snobberies intellectual snobbery is the hardest to understand, for no wise man was ever impressed with anything else than his own ignorance. We should never look with contempt on any man for whom Christ died. (iii) Then Jesus goes on to speak of the man who calls his brother moros (Greek #3474). Moros also means fool, but the man who is moros is the man who is a moral fool. He is the man who is playing the fool. The Psalmist spoke of the fool who has said in his heart that there is no God (Psalms 14:1). Such a man was a moral fool, a man who lived an immoral life, and who in wishful thinking said that there was no God. To call a man moros was not to criticise his mental ability; it was to cast aspersions on his moral character; it was to take his name and reputation from him, and to brand him as a loose-living and immoral person. So Jesus says that he who destroys his brother's name and reputation is liable to the severest judgment of all, the judgment of the fire of Gehenna. Gehenna is a word with a history; often the Revised Standard Version translates it "hell." The word was very commonly used by the Jews (Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 10:28; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6). It really means the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom is a valley to the south-west of Jerusalem. It was notorious as the place where Ahaz had introduced into Israel the fire worship of the heathen God Molech, to whom little children were burned in the fire. "He burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons as an offering" (2 Chronicles 28:3). Josiah, the reforming king, had stamped out that worship, and had ordered that the valley should be for ever after an accursed place. "He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech" (2 Kings 23:10). In consequence of this the Valley of Hinnom became the place where the refuse of Jerusalem was cast out and destroyed. It was a kind of public incinerator. Always the fire smouldered in it, and a pall of thick smoke lay over it, and it bred a loathsome kind of worm which was hard to kill (Mark 9:44-48). So Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, became identified in people's minds with all that was accursed and filthy, the place where useless and evil things were destroyed. That is why it became a synonym for the place of God's destroying power, for hell. So, then, Jesus insists that the gravest thing of all is to destroy a man's reputation and to take his good name away. No punishment is too severe for the malicious tale-bearer, or the gossip over the teacups which murders people's reputations. Such conduct, in the most literal sense, is a hell-deserving sin. As we have said, all these gradations of punishment are not to be taken literally. What Jesus is saying here is this: "In the old days men condemned murder; and truly murder is for ever wrong. But I tell you that not only are a man's outward actions under judgment; his inmost thoughts are also under the scrutiny and the judgment of God. Long-lasting anger is bad; contemptuous speaking is worse, and the careless or the malicious talk which destroys a man's good name is worst of all." The man who is the slave of anger, the man who speaks in the accent of contempt, the man who destroys another's good name, may never have committed a murder in action, but he is a murderer at heart. (Matthew 5 - William Barclay's Daily Study Bible) Quotes on Anger - He that is inebriated with a passion is unfit for an action. Thomas Adams When anger enters the mind wisdom departs. Thomas à Kempis Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind. Anon. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Anon. Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest. Anon. Anger is just one letter short of danger. Anon. Anger is often more hurtful than the injury that caused it. Anon. Don't fly into a rage unless you are prepared for a rough landing. Anon. He who can suppress a moment's anger may prevent a day of sorrow. Anon. Nothing can cook your goose quicker than boiling anger. Anon. One thing that improves the longer it is kept is your temper. Anon. Sharp words make more wounds than surgeons can heal. Anon. The anger of today is the remorse of tomorrow. Anon. Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help. Anon. Angry men are blind and foolish. Pietro Aretino It is easy to fly into a passion—anybody can do that—but to be angry with the right person at the right time and with the right object and in the right way—that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it. Aristotle Our anger and impatience often proves much more mischievous than the things about which we are angry or impatient. Marcus Aurelius A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil. Henry Ward Beecher It is better to swallow angry words than to have to eat them afterwards. John Blanchard The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules. Phillips Brooks Anger is usually inexhaustible. John Calvin Intemperate anger deprives men of their senses. John Calvin The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should it rise upon our confidence. C. C. Colton Anger and jealously can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. George Eliot Anger is seldom without a reason, but seldom a good one. Benjamin Franklin A man in a passion rides a horse that runs away with him. Thomas Fuller Act nothing in a furious passion. It is putting to sea in a storm. Thomas Fuller Anger is a sin that is its own punishment. Matthew Henry Angry men have good memories. Matthew Henry It is the great duty of all Christians to put off anger. It unfits for duty... a man cannot wrestle with God and wrangle with his neighbour at the same time. Philip Henry The worst thing we can bring to a religious controversy is anger. Matthew Henry When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off. Matthew Henry When passion is on the throne reason is out of doors. Matthew Henry Human anger never practises the things that God can approve. D. Edmond Hiebert Anger at God is a symptom. The basic problem is unbelief. Gladys Hunt Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others. Isocrates When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred. Thomas Jefferson Anger should not be destroyed but sanctified. William Jenkyn Anger's the anaesthetic of the mind. C. S. Lewis When passion enters a situation, human reasoning (unassisted by grace) has as much chance of retaining its hold on truth as a snowflake in the mouth of a blast furnace. C. S. Lewis When you are in the right, you can afford to keep your temper; and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. G. C. Lorimer Nothing makes room for Satan more than wrath. Thomas Manton No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. George J. Nathan Anger begins in folly and ends in repentance. Pythagoras People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing. Will Rogers The greatest remedy for anger is delay. Seneca Unrestrained anger is often more hurtful to us than the injury that provoked it. Seneca There is no old age for a man's anger. Sophocles Passion is the drunkenness of the mind. Robert South When anger is present, look for the pain. R. C. Sproul Anger is temporary insanity. C. H. Spurgeon I have no more right as a Christian to allow a bad temper to dwell in me than I have to allow the devil himself to dwell there. C. H. Spurgeon To be angry against sin is high and holy thing. C. H. Spurgeon Wrath in man is a tormenting fiend. David Thomas The fury of man never furthered the glory of God. A. W. Tozer Anger and malice differ but in age. John Trapp Anger may rush into a wise man's bosom, but should not rest there. John Trapp Ask permission from God before you dare do anything in an angry way. John Trapp It is not a sin to be angry, but hard not to sin when we are angry. John Trapp That anger is without sin that is against sin. Thomas Watson (Compilation of quotes from John Blanchard Complete Gathered Gold)