Charles Hodge on Ephesians 4:31

V. 31. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you. These are intimately related evils. Bitterness, a word transferred from the sphere of sensations to that of the mind. The adjective πικρός means sharp, as an arrow, then pungent to the taste, disagreeable, and then venomous. The poisonous water given to the woman suspected of adultery, Numbers 5, 18, is called the "bitter water." The word bitterness, therefore, in its figurative sense means what is corroding, as grief, or any thing which acts on the mind as poison does on the body, or on the minds of others as venom does on their bodies. The venom of the serpent lies harmless in his fang; but all evil feelings are poison to the subject of them as well as venom to their object. The command, therefore, to lay aside all bitterness, is a command to lay aside every thing which corrodes our own minds or wounds the feelings of others. Under this head are the particulars which follow, viz. wrath; θυμός, (from θύω, to burn,) means the mind itself as the seat of passions and desires—then the mind in the commotion of passion. Ὀργή, anger, is the passion itself, i. e. the manifestation of θυμός, as clamor and evil speaking are the outward expression of anger. The context shows that βλασφημία is neither blasphemy as directed against God, nor merely slander as directed against men; but any form of speech springing from anger, and adapted either to wound or to injure others. With all malice. Κακία is a general term for badness or depravity of any kind. Here the context shows that it means malevolence, the desire to injure. We are to lay aside not only wrath and anger but all other forms of malevolent feeling.