A Literary Review of the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards

Preacher Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, chides the people of the church and of the world, stating that they are not worthy of God’s mercy, that they will soon face his wrath if they do not change their ways. Edwards’ purpose is to show the people of the congregation that they are not living the Christian life the way that God intends it. He includes metaphors and parallel structure, along with personification in order to get his audience to see that in the eyes’ of God, their ways are evil and they need to change.

In the early part of the essay Edwards is describing how angry God is with the people in his congregation. He uses personification as a tool to make hell seem even more intimidating and scary. He begins describing the flames of hell as if they were living creatures. “The flames do now rage,” Edwards says while describing the wrath of God and the pit of hell. The flames are angry and want to take the sinners, that’s how Edwards wants the congregation to feel. He wants them to feel that they must change their sinning ways or be damned to hell and the eternal lake of fire. Edwards even goes as far to personify God’s wrath, almost like giving it it’s own emotions and actions. He says that the “wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.” The wrath itself is so extremely angry that it sees the people as no more than those already damned to hell. Edwards is once again instilling fear in the people of his congregation. Essentially scaring them into being better Christians.

In the middle to late part of the essay, Edwards uses metaphors as another form of scaring his audience. His first metaphor, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire,” is comparing God’s view on humans, to human’s view on insects and spiders. Edwards is saying that God wouldn’t even bat an eye if he dropped a human into the pit of hell, just like a human wouldn’t bat an eye for killing an insect. Another metaphor used by Edwards is comparing God’s wrath to a bow; “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart.” God is ready to strike the sinners down at any moment, and Edwards’ audience doesn’t get it. In order to make them understand he uses intense metaphors as a way to get his point across. These help the audience finally begin to awaken and see just how angry God is at them. But, is Edwards right speaking in the place of God, assuming that he is angry?

Throughout the sermon, Edwards is seen using parallel structure. In the later half of the essay he repeats the word “nothing” in a sentence many times. This is effective for Edwards because it emphasizes that his audience hasn’t done a single thing to receive mercy from God. In another part of the essay, Edwards repeats the words “may have” along with “may keep.” Edwards is telling his audience that they might be a christian, and they might practice their religion, but that is the sole reason for not being thrown into hell. Edwards does it again when he uses the word “any” multiple times. He is describing hell and how a person will feel nothing but pain and suffering for eternity. Edwards repeats words and phrases multiple times to get a point across and to let his main idea sink in. When the audience listens to or reads a repeating phrase they pay more attention to what Edwards is saying and understand it better.

Edwards’ intentions are to show the people listening to his sermon that God is angry with them and if they don’t change their ways, God will cast them into hell. He does this effectively by using metaphors, parallel structure, and personification.