“An easily angered person.” The Hebrew uses a beautiful concrete idiom, “short of nostrils.” The people in the biblical times were astute students of behavior, and when a person is angry his face squinches and his nose flares, making him somewhat “short of nose.” A “short of nose” person is one who is angry or easily angered.

Anger is what psychologists understand as a secondary emotion, an emotion based on an underlying emotion. Although there is genuine righteous anger, which we see in both God and Jesus in the Bible, that is actually quite rare. Most of the time, a person who is angry is angry because they are afraid in some way, although that fear can be disguised in different ways, such as indignation.

A person who recognizes that their anger is based on fear can begin to effectively deal with their fear and become a much more peaceful person. When God says to “put away anger” (Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8), He is not asking us to do something we cannot do. Given that, the person who stubbornly refuses to deal with their anger and the underlying fear that causes it will act, and continue to act, foolishly. Thus, Proverbs 29:22 says that an angry man stirs up strife and causes sin, and Proverbs 22:24 says not to be friends with an angry person; that friendship will only lead to trouble.

“a schemer.” The Hebrew is literally, “a man of schemes [or “devices”],” or “a person of schemes.”