In Judges, chapter ten, verse seven, the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel that burned like fire. He was exceedingly incensed against them, nothing more provoking to Him than idolatry. God allows the selling of the children of Israel into the hands of the Philistines and the hands of the children of Ammon. The delivery of the Israelites into the possession of the two pagan nations became subject and was in bondage to them.
Anger at sin and wickedness is the natural response to God’s holiness. It is an expression of His goodness and His love for righteousness. When believers experience anger against sin, cruelty, evil, or injustice, the annoyance is not immoral if it is a sharing of God’s love for righteousness and a hatred of evil. It is sinful if the anger causes an unrighteous response, such as retaliatory violence and murder.
An example of an unrighteous response comes at the hands of Simeon and Levi in Genesis thirty-four verse twenty-five, who was Dinah’s brothers. As born of the same mother, they, with Reuben and Judah, were especially bound to espouse their sister’s cause, but the method they used was cruel to the extreme. And it seems that these two were the leaders in the plot, having excluded Reuben from it as a man of feeble character and opposed to bloodshed, as stated in Genesis thirty-seven, verse twenty-two. Judah, as one too honorable to take part in a sinful transaction. Long afterward, Jacob speaks of it in terms of the strongest reprobation, as in chapter forty-nine, verses five through seven in the same chapter. The difference between Simeon and Levi’s case and what God refers to is when doing evil contrary to God’s Word, which these two brothers commit: they avenge the defilement made against their sister by murdering Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite.
Simeon and Levi went further than to justify there cause. They went on a rampage by killing all the males in the city. The two brothers looted the town and captured all the women and children.