There are several memorable images in Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" which emphasize the vital nature of his message and the immediacy of the danger. The best-known and most compelling of these is the image of the person who "holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire." This image combines a literal picture of hell, as both fire and death, with the idea that the sinner is repulsive in the sight of God.
If you were to catch a spider in your home and hold it over the kitchen fire, your immediate object would presumably be to drop it into the fire and kill it. Holding the spider over the fire is an inconvenience. It is far easier to let the spider go. Moreover, the reason that you are holding the spider over the fire in the first place is that you intend to drop it into the flames. You have probably never picked up a spider, intending to throw it into the fire, and then changed your mind at the last moment. Everything about this image, therefore, serves to reinforce Edwards's message: your immediate descent into hell is not merely a possibility or a danger, it is the default course of action for God to take, far more likely to happen than your preservation.
Arguably the most frightening image in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is that of God as a bowman, bending back his bow of wrath, with the arrow ready on the string. What's especially scary about the image is that it rams home the central message of Edwards's sermon that God is ready and able at any given moment to take action against sinners.
Edwards doesn't want his listeners to feel comfortable with his message. On the contrary, he wants them to feel that they're primed and ready for damnation at a moment's notice. The image of God as the bowman, with his bow of wrath pulled right back and with an arrow ready to be fired, is particularly adept at conveying the requisite sense of urgency. God is not just watching sinners; he's got his arrows of wrath trained on them.
Edwards hopes that this striking image will strike the fear of God into his listeners and that they will change their sinful ways and turn once more to the path of righteousness. If they don't, they can expect an arrow of divine wrath to be fired right at them. If that doesn't scare his audience, then nothing will.
Further Reading
The previous post lucidly addresses a critical component of the fear that Edwards invokes. I would like to suggest that Edwards utilizes the imagery of the "now" moment as part of his motivation. He is quite intent on suggesting that part of his rationale in the explanation of God's anger refers to the timing of Colonial sentiments. At a particular moment in time when the colonists are driven by economic prosperity and material wealth, the belief...
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in spirituality is on the decline in colonial life. It is this precise moment that galvanizes Edwards to speak his notion of the spiritual truth relating to the notion of salvation and damnation. It is at this particular moment in Colonial life where God's bow and arrow are set on the Colonists and the sooner they change their ways from the secular to the spiritual, the greater the chance that God's punishment will lessen.
In the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards uses many images to frighten his audience in hopes of persuading them to reform their ways. He believes that they all deserve to be damned and that they will be unless they reform.
Edwards spends a great deal of the sermon emphasizing how angry God is at all the sinners of the world, and especially those in the congregation. However, if one must choose a "key" image, it would probably be that in which Edwards talks about God holding human souls by "a slender thread" over the fires of hell, ready to cut the thread and let them go into eternal damnation.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.
What kind of imagery does Jonathan Edwards use in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an angry God"?
The primary image that Jonathan Edwards utilizes is that of walking along a steep path and slipping or sliding off the slope. This image is mentioned in the Bible, as he notes: "Their foot shall slide in due time" (Deuteronomy 32:35). Edwards develops it along four different lines: emphasizing the exposure to falling, the suddenness of destruction, the individual capability of falling, and God's role in keeping people from falling. In all those explanations, he brings up some aspect of the image of the physical act of falling, not just the metaphorical aspect of damnation.
He also uses military imagery, speaking of a prince as the defender of a realm who has many followers and fortifications. In contrast to such a fortress, he brings up images of the vulnerability of humans, comparing them to chaff, stubble, or worms. The soul hangs as if by a thread, he says, that God can easily sever. These images also relate to the physical location of hell, as a pit into which God can throw people (as earthquakes tumble rocks).
Edwards returns to the central conceit, or extended metaphor, of the title. He evokes literal images of God's hands: holding human souls over the "fiery pit" where the devil awaits them—"thus it is, that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell." He reiterates images of flames that will consume men but also states that this fire matches the fire already inside their hearts:
the flames gather and flash about them; . . . the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out.
Ultimately, he reinforces this image with a warning about the danger people are in: "'tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God."
What kind of imagery does Jonathan Edwards use in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an angry God"?
Jonathan Edwards uses traditional biblical imagery found in Matthew and Revelation when describing Hell, the destination of all but the elect. Edwards describes it as a fiery pit, a "lake of burning brimstone," and a furnace. He sermonizes on the "glowing flames" of God's wrath and personifies Hell with a "wide gaping mouth" ready to receive sinners.
Edwards likens the fall of sinners to a rock falling through a spiderweb. He also invokes imagery of "black clouds of God's wrath" hanging over the heads of the damned.
Edwards also used images accessible to the rural Connecticut congregation who heard the sermon. He compares God's power to a "rough wind" that could, if He unleashed it, leave the unrepentant behind like "the chaff of the summer threshing floor." Edwards also invokes the image of God's wrath as great waters held back by a dam. If let loose, it would be impossible for any man to withstand. One last example of an image that Edwards uses to communicate his conception of God's wrath is a bow and arrow, strung, taut, and ready to be let go and "made drunk with [your] blood."
What kind of imagery does Jonathan Edwards use in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an angry God"?
A fire and brimstone preacher, Jonathan Edwards was a stalwart Puritan and much of his Calvinist background is apparent in the frightening imagery of his sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." In fact, the image of the bottomless pit of hell whose fiery floods wax high enough to burn the gossamer thread that holds the unworthy souls over it evoked so much terror in the congregation of Edwards that women fainted and men became terrorized and trembled.
This sermon of Edwards is constructed around a passage from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible: "Their foot shall slide in due time." Using the metaphor of a slippery slide, Edwards, at a revival where his famous sermon was given, points to the dangers of spiritual sliding. The yawning abyss waits for the sinners, whose wickedness makes them "heavy as lead," and only the "mere pleasure" of God keeps them from burning in the images of "fiery floods" and "fire of wrath." The image of a "bow" for God's wrath that can easily bend and send forth its arrow is an unnerving one, indeed, as the "slender thread" dangling near the "flames of divine wrath" which can singe it at any moment.
What kind of imagery does Jonathan Edwards use in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an angry God"?
In general, Jonathan Edwards uses very angry imagery in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
The most famous image used is that of a "loathsome insect." He says that God looks at people as if they were loathsome insects and in fact hates us more than we would hate such an insect.
A related image that Edwards uses is the idea that God is holding us by a thread over the pit of hell, liable at any moment to cut the thread and let us drop because we are evil and deserve to be punished.
These are the most famous images from the sermon and both are rather angry and scary images.