That's not how it was framed by the original Christians. That was when the church took over. Another problem is that in the ancient languages most often it merely says "anger" rather than "wrath". And a lot of times "of God" was added later.

The Old Testament indeed sometimes had the "OBEY" attitude. That's because human authors perceived it that way. Everyone forgets that people wrote all these books and acts like God dropped them out of the sky. That's literally what I thought as a kid because that's how they make it sound. This is true of every single book. None are attributed to God or Jesus, even by tradition. Always one of their disciples.