Jonathon Edwards, famous for preaching during “The Great Awakening” lived as a puritan, but later found out that church needed reform. Spreading the gospel with his colleague George Whitefield created a style of teaching using something called the” Holy Tone”. The Holy Tone became the new and energetic way of preaching. Attracting the people of the colonies and connecting them to the gospel and the word of God inspired them to start evangelizing. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, wrote by Jonathan Edwards in the 1700’s uses literary devices such imagery, metaphors to get his congregation to understand his sermon easily. This entices the congregation to repent for their sins.
Deuteronomy 32:35; “Their foot shall slide in due time”, the verse basically talks about sinners going down an unrighteous path. Sinners will soon fall into the pits going against the word of god. A piece of imagery that he uses informs them that if they do not change their ways they will burn in the pits of hell. He uses the illustration of a spider over a fire. The spider represents the sinner and the person/hand represents God’s ability to hold you. The illustration simply conveys, God will hold you but, also has the ability to let the sinner go if he/she does not change. The more you sin, the more God forgives you, but after so much time sinners must change because if not, the sinner shall live in hell for eternity. Another illustration Jonathan Edwards uses a spider’s web and a descending rock. It demonstrated how much people and a sinner’s need God. It conveys everyone chances of living without God, so repenting to get on the right track with god is something that everyone needs.
Next, Jonathan Edwards uses a metaphor comparing God’s wrath to great waters. This refers to water being able to come wipe all things in its path. Water is something that is much needed to survive, but it can also become very powerful and destroy. He uses this to connect with the people to relate God’s power to the violent nature of water. God is an Almighty God and holds all power in his hands which is what conveyed in the metaphor. Another metaphor used to induce sinners is when he compares God’s wrath to a bow bent and an arrow, ready to pierce the heart of a sinner. An arrow, trenchant, and contains much power retains the ability to do much damage. Shooting an arrow takes an excellent and accurate person to hit the target aimed for, which represents God, and an arrow piercing the heart meant immediate death.
After analyzing “sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” the metaphoric use of words and imagery play very important roles. These techniques make understanding the message much easier to understand. Considering that the people living in that time period were not well educated and appealed to more of the minority. They were not very well literate. The use of these scary images persuades them abjure from committing the sins again.
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