Job 5:2

Surely,

   Anger kills the fool,

      Impatience slays the simpleton.

As always, the sources I use vary greatly on how these interjections are handled in the translation. Beyond “surely”, we had “for”, “remember”, and a lot of skipping it. I try to use them when they seem to add to the message. Here, I selected surely as it plays into the concept of fools and simpletons.

Alternatives for “anger” included “vexation”, “resentment”, and “wrath”. Anger seemed the most catchall of these and I tend to think of wrath as the Lord’s. “Fool” was unanimous, and “simpleton” was selected over “silly ones” and the less poetic “simple” or “simple one”. “Kills” was also unanimous, and “slays” was used whereever a verb was used.

“Impatience” was the one term with multiple options that had me thinking. Alternatives were “jealousy”, “envy”, “passion”, and “jealous fury”. The basic idea behind envy and jealousy are very similar and the fury seems an attempt to match the emotion of anger consistent with this idea. However, there are huge differences to me. “Envy” implies that the simpleton wants what someone else has. “Jealousy” implies that the simpleton has taken what someone else had. And “jealous fury” and “passion” implies sexual overtones in what has been taken. “Passion” is a little different in that it can just as easily indicate something done in the heat of the moment due to the characteristics of the simpleton. I would have been happy with passion based on this.

However, “impatience” carries a whole lot more “instant gratification” to it, and it also creates a duality against the emotion of anger rather than matching it. A fool gets mad or gets someone else mad and this is different from a simpleton doing something out of impatience or someone’s response to their slowness in doing something. Either way, I really felt impatience was a bigger stick to balance anger.

In the end, I really like this verse as a lesson we can learn. It reminds me of a proverb. A neighbor had an accident this week that in my assessment was a product of being impatient. We had a near accident this week as the anger of some fool overcame his good senses. Both incidents involved Christians trying to live everyday life. Nothing weird was happening. These verses are not to teach the fool and the simpleton as they are too self absorbed or just not capable of it. They are for us. They are to show us not to act out in anger, not to be a fool, not to be impatient, and to be cognizant of the limits of those around us. Outside the car, our lives are not daily impacted by life and death decisions, but everyday people around us are facing eternal life in heaven or hell decisions. Let your self learn self-control and patience.