Wrath
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ὀργή is the NT's principal word for divine wrath, and its most important feature is that it is settled — not a tantrum but a verdict. Rom 1:18 announces that God's ὀργή 'is being revealed' (ἀποκαλύπτεται, present tense) from heaven right now.
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Full entry for ὀργή (G3709) · Open the biblical lexicon
ὀργή is the NT's principal word for divine wrath, and its most important feature is that it is settled — not a tantrum but a verdict. Rom 1:18 announces that God's ὀργή 'is being revealed' (ἀποκαλύπτεται, present tense) from heaven right now.
The BSB source-word alignment has 36 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include wrath (18), anger (8), of wrath (2), [suffer] wrath (1), [The] wrath (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 3:7. Its strongest book concentrations include Romans (12), Revelation (6), 1 Thessalonians (3), Ephesians (3).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
ὀργή is the NT's principal word for divine wrath, and its most important feature is that it is settled — not a tantrum but a verdict. Rom 1:18 announces that God's ὀργή 'is being revealed' (ἀποκαλύπτεται, present tense) from heaven right now. This is not a future threat alone; it is a current reality. Paul's argument in Romans 1-3 is that the present disorder of human society — the exchange of the glory of God for idols, the breakdown of sexuality and community, the suppression of moral conscience — is itself what divine wrath looks like in history: God giving people over to what they have chosen (Rom 1:24, 26, 28).
The eschatological dimension comes in Rom 2:5: those who refuse to repent are 'storing up wrath for themselves for the day of wrath.' The same ὀργή that operates now in history arrives in its fullness at the end. The gospel's answer is specific: 1 Thess 1:10, 'Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come,' and 1 Thess 5:9, 'God has not destined us for wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.'
ὀργή is locally indexed at about 36 NT occurrences, with especially prominent use in Romans, Revelation, and the Pauline epistles generally. The Synoptic and Johannine examples should be handled passage by passage rather than as a standalone distribution claim.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
The programmatic statement. ὀργή is currently being revealed — present tense, not merely announced as future. The mechanism of revelation in Rom 1:24-28 is the 'handing over' of humanity to its chosen disorder. Wrath in the present age operates through the consequences God permits to run their course.
But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
The eschatological dimension: wrath accumulates. Unrepentance is not neutral — each day without repentance is a deposit into an account that pays out on the last day. The 'day of wrath' is not arbitrary; it is the final expression of what has been building throughout history.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”
The present-tense resting of ὀργή on those outside faith. Wrath is the default condition — not something applied later but something that 'remains' (μένει). Faith in the Son moves a person out from under the wrath that was already resting on them.
And to await His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead—Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath.
The gospel's practical horizon: Christ as the one who rescues from ὀργή. The phrase 'wrath to come' (τῆς ὀργῆς τῆς ἐρχομένης) treats the eschatological ὀργή as certain and approaching. Deliverance from it is not merely forgiveness but rescue from an arriving reality.
And they said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
The 'wrath of the Lamb' — the most arresting phrase in the NT's wrath vocabulary. The Lamb, whose blood was shed as the propitiation for sin, is also the agent of final wrath. The same One whose ἀγάπη drove the cross is the One whose ὀργή arrives in judgment. These are not contradictory; they are the same holiness expressed in different directions.
Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!
Justification as rescue from ὀργή. 'Much more' (πολλῷ μᾶλλον) is Paul's confidence argument: if the greater thing (justification) has been accomplished, the lesser (final rescue from wrath) follows necessarily. The blood that justifies is the same blood that turns aside the ὀργή.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. God's settled reaction against sin, distinct from momentary anger; divine justice executing judgment
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 36 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
anger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseanger, wrath, passion
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 4 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 5 selected witnesses from 36 lexical occurrence verses.
ὀργή is built from this root:
It highlights God’s holy response to sin and frames humanity’s need for justification. James 1:19–21
Denotes righteous divine judgment remaining upon unbelief.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The 'wrath of the Lamb' in Rev 6:16 is the NT's most compressed statement on wrath: the same Person whose love took Him to the cross is the Person whose wrath arrives in final judgment. These are not two different personalities in tension — they are the same holiness expressing itself as redeeming love toward those who receive it and as settled wrath toward those who reject it.
Preaching on ὀργή without the cross produces terror; preaching the cross without ὀργή produces sentimentality. Rom 5:9 is the proper sequence: justified by His blood, rescued from wrath. The blood is the hinge.
Rom.1.18
The classical Greek distinction — ὀργή as settled, θυμός as sudden — is relevant in NT wrath passages where both appear. Rev 14:10 describes the wine of God's θυμός poured into the cup of His ὀργή: the hot fury and the settled disposition coexist in the eschatological judgment. Eph 4:31 commands putting away human ὀργή — using the word that in divine contexts is entirely appropriate, showing the problem with human anger is not the word's meaning but its source and object.
The OT trajectory runs from prophetic חֵמָה (Ezek 5:15; Jer 30:23) through the Psalms' confidence that YHWH's ὀργή is real but His mercy is greater (Ps 30:5: 'His anger is for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime') to the NT's two-register claim: the ὀργή that Rom 1:18 announces as currently being revealed is the same ὀργή that Rom 2:5 says accumulates for the last day, and the same ὀργή that Rev 6:16-17 describes arriving in the Lamb's wrath. The OT promised that the day of the Lord would include both salvation and judgment; the NT locates both in the same Person.
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