The Greek noun thymos (θυμός) denotes a passionate, boiling anger — wrath that surges with intense heat. Unlike orgē (which is more settled, decisive anger), thymos describes the hot, explosive, passionate quality of wrath — whether human emotional fury or the divine wrath that pours out in the bowls of judgment. The word derives from thyō (to rush, to boil).
Thymos appears 18 times in the NT — most frequently in Revelation (14 times), where it describes both the wrath of God poured out in judgment (Rev. 14:10,19; 15:1,7; 16:1) and the "wine of her passionate immorality\” (the intoxicating corruption of Babylon — Rev. 14:8; 18:3). The juxtaposition is profound: Babylon's seductive thymos (the passionate wine of her idolatry) meets God's righteous thymos (the bowls of His wrath).
In the NT epistles, thymos appears in vice lists alongside orgē, eritheia, and kraugē (Gal. 5:20; Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8) — fleshly wrath that believers are called to put off. The paradox of Scripture: God's thymos is holy and just; human thymos is destructive and sinful. We are to "put away" our thymos while trusting that God's thymos is the righteous end of all injustice.