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What else could Scripture mean—what else could Yahweh mean—when he says that he is “slow to anger” (cf. Ex. 34:6; Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Pss. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8)? Surely Scripture is not telling us to believe that, in his patience and slowness to anger, the Lord bears no such relationship to us. To affirm such a thing would be tantamount to affirming that Scripture enjoins us to believe what is not the case in reality. If we are simply to believe that God is slow to anger, even though he is not, then we are encouraged by Scripture to believe a proposition to be true when it is false. This kind of language in Scripture cannot be relegated to mere metaphor. The Lord’s disposition toward us in cases like this necessarily depends on our responses to him in this world. When the Bible says that the Lord is slow to anger, there are two covenantal characteristics highlighted: he is slow, that is, patient with us. Thus, there is a real relationship to time in which God takes on temporality; and his anger, though tied to this patience, is nevertheless real. We should not simply believe he is angry or could become angry; he really is angry.