Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Ephesians 4:31

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice:" — Ephesians 4:31 (ASV)

A condensed series of imperatives winds up this section about the Christian’s attitude to one’s neighbor. This verse is negative; v.32 is positive and leads into the next chapter. “Get rid of” (GK 149) is “let it be removed” and thus “have no more to do with it.” Every trace of these blemishes is to be forsaken. “Bitterness” (4394; cf. Colossians 3:19) is the opposite not only of sweetness but of kindness. It is the spite that harbors resentment and keeps a score of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5). “Rage” (GK 2596) is what flows from bitterness in an outburst of uncontrolled passion and frustration. “Anger” (GK 3973) describes the wrath of God in 5:6 and of people in v.26. It signifies an unjustifiable human emotion that manifests itself in noisy assertiveness and abuse (cf. Colossians 3:8). The poisonous source of all these regrettable reassertions of the “old self” (v.22) is “malice” (GK 2798).