“How can a perfect God be furious?”

There are some crimes that outrage society. It often takes a murder of a child to stir a sense of anger in sinful humanity, but God’s wrath is stirred even by hatred, which He considers equivalent to murder. All sins are crimes against God’s law (1 John 3:4) and are extremely offensive to Him.

The fact that we are made in God’s image can help us to understand His character. We are capable of some of God’s virtues and emotions. We can express love, kindness, and mercy. We are capable of anger, hatred, jealousy, etc. The problem is we are tainted with sin. God isn’t. His love is perfect. His mercy is great. His jealousy is without sin. His anger is judicial; it is always just right.

“Let such know that Jehovah, the one and only living true God, is a jealous God, and a revenger; He is jealous for the comfort of His worshippers, jealous of His land (Joel 2:18), and will not have that injured. He is a revenger, and He is furious.

“He has fury (so the word is), not as man has it, in whom it is an ungoverned passion (so He has said, Fury is not in me, Isa. 27:4), but He has it in such a way as becomes the righteous God, to put an edge upon His justice, and to make it appear more terrible to those who otherwise would stand in no awe of it. He is Lord of anger (so the Hebrew phrase is for that which we read, He is furious); He has anger, but He has it at command and under government. Our anger is often lord over us, as theirs that have no rule over their own spirits, but God is always Lord of His anger and weighs a path to it (Psa. 78:50).”

Matthew Henry

Ezekiel 5:15 “You shall be⁴ a reproach and a taunt, a warning ^jand a horror, to ⁱthe nations all around you, ^kwhen I execute judgments on you in anger and fury, and ^lwith furious rebukes—I am the Lord; I have spoken—”