Camila Garcia
October 5th, 2012
7th period
This sermon is titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards’s intense sermon was written with a clear purpose; to make the experience of Hell so real and scary that his readers would want to change their lives. In this sermon Jonathan Edwards portrays Gods anger using Figurative Language, which involves imaginative comparisons such as similes, metaphors and personification.
Jonathan Edwards uses metaphors, which is comparing two different things without using words as like or as. One metaphor Edwards uses is “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string” (Lines 66-67) Jonathan Edwards is comparing God’s anger to a bow ready to strike, by this he means that God’s anger is ready to strike at any moment, just like the bow. Another metaphor Jonathan Edwards uses is in lines 94-95 and says “His sight; you are ten thousand times more abdominal in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. Edwards is comparing our hate for a hateful venomous snake to his hate toward a sinner, but it is ten thousand times worse.
Jonathan Edwards uses another form of figurative language, a simile, to help the readers experience the horrors he is describing. A simile is comparing two words using such words as like or as. In one example, he describes “wickedness” as being “heavy as lead” in line 39. Edwards compares the idea of wickedness to a heavy material his audience is familiar with so it helps them feel the dead weight of wickedness. In lines 92 and 93 Edwards uses another simile” His wrath toward you burns like fire”. By this simile he is comparing fire to God’s wrath, which again is giving the readers a sense of “feel” when reading the sermon and helps them experience it.
Edwards also uses personification, which gives human characteristics to objects, animals, or abstractions. He uses one personification in line nine saying “the flames gather and flash about...