The wrath of God is something that can seem very contradictory, the reason is that we are told from the time we were kids that God is a God of love and compassion, when someone joins the ranks of Christianity the propaganda somehow glances over, what we decide is, the mean parts in favor of the good parts. So it becomes impossible for us to come up with a comfortable reconciliation of a wrathful God and a compassionate God, some try to say that God had to deal with people in different ways at different times and now He doesn't need to deal with us in a wrathful way that He did back in Old Testament times. But this excuse is just that, man trying to excuse the actions of God and write them of as nothing, in fact if we take an honest look at the actions of man then and the actions of men now we would be forced to rethink that excuse.
So the question then becomes what do we do with a God the is perfectly loving and completely vengeful? Maybe I am getting ahead of my self though, first we have to ask is God wrathful? Is God loving? The answer to the second question for many would seem to be an easy answer but in reality it can be a lot harder to answer then some might think because of the first question, and I will try to show why.
First is God a wrathful God? My answer to this question will, of course, be yes He is? We can read over and over in the Old Testament about the wrath of God from the fall of man and God taking away eternal life from all of man for their actions to the story of David and Bathsheba and God taking a child as punishment. All through out the Old Testament we can see God's vengeance being worked out. It is written about in a poetic form in the Psalms and Lamentations, It is written about in factual terms in the prophets. The wrath of God would almost seem to be the theme of the Old Testament until you look at why God is punishing people in the Bible, God takes away eternal life as a consequence of sin, He takes Davids son as a consequence of sin, even Israels exile is a consequence of sin. Gods wrath is always in response to sin as a type of punishment for the purpose of correction.
This would then bring me to the second question is God loving? My mom would always say to me when I was younger that she punished me because she loves me, she would also say "this is going to hurt me a lot more then it is going to hurt you" and I never believed her on that, but the first statement is true. No good parent would let their child run around and do what ever they wanted, parents are there to put rules in place so that their children can learn and grow in safety, in the same way that is how God's punishment works, He punishes because He cares, sounds corny but it is true