Heavy Wrath

On a farm located on a church estate in southern Iceland, sits a rock. I think I’m going to need to back up a little. A couple hundred years ago, as legend has it, Pastor Björnsson was the pastor of both a church and sheep. He built a sheep pen of stone, and used a flat, 401 lb. stone for the gate. By and by, the stone became famous, and not for being much heavier than any door needs to be, but as a competition for feats of strength. For a couple centuries, men have tested their strength by trying to lift the rock and move it. Last year,  a 6’8”, 420lb giant of a man, broke the world record the world record carrying the stone 322 feet. His name is also Björnsson. Now, believe it or not, people travel from all over the world to Iceland, drive out to this farm, and make their way to the sheep gate where there’s a rock laying on the ground. They try to pick the thing up, and if they can lift it, they carry it as far as they can. Men like to test their strength. Another popular competition is the sandbag throw. Contestants take sandbags ranging from 50-100 lbs and throw them backwards, over their heads, to cross a beam 15 ft in the air.  Sand and stone are routinely used as implements in Strongmen competitions and have been for hundreds of years because they are heavy. Even the strongest men in the world can only bear the weight of heavy sand and stone for a short time before they succumb.

Proverbs 27:3, “A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.” Solomon uses these heavy implements to describe the heaviness of the wrath of a foolish person. The weight of the fool’s wrath is intolerable for most to bear (Exodus 5:5-10). The fools wrath is heavy because it is without righteousness. God told the nation of Israel they were to judge, an eye for an eye. That’s a law of equal justice and righteousness, not revenge. God curbs the wrath of the fool who wants an eye for a fingernail (Matthew 18:21-35). Their anger and fury isn’t controlled by justice. Once they become ignited in their hatred and passions, there is no end to their fury.

The fools wrath is heavy with folly. Wrath untethered from the wisdom of God is dedicated toward defending our personal glory and honor. And so it’s heavy because the stroke is made without just cause. I knew a person who hated their neighbor with unbridled passion. I asked him why and what started it, and they couldn’t really explain. He looked at me incredulously like it was self evident why they hated this person, and doubted my sound judgment that I had to ask why. The fools wrath starts quickly (Proverbs 14:29) and never ends. While our God is long suffering, the fool has a quick fuse and long memory. This makes the fools wrath both cruel (Proverbs 27:4) and dangerous (Proverbs 17:12).