Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Language Analysis

In the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards, the sermon’s author, used multiple techniques such as figurative language, image interpretation and use of pathos to ensure his purpose gets through to the audience. Through the uses of figurative languages like metaphors, personification, similes, and oxymorons, Edwards creates vivid, visual images that provoke emotions in the audience, swaying them towards his purpose in which he stresses that people need to change before God, with his almighty power, destroys them all. For example one use of figurative language that illustrates an image for the audience is, “and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.” In this example, Edwards uses a simile, a type of figurative language, to evoke fear and negative emotion in the audience by displaying a visual image of a spider’s web blocking a heavy rock.

Another example in which Edwards uses figurative language, the use of pathos and the interpretation of the depicted image to prove his purpose, is shown in the line ”[a]nd the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath subjected it in hope.” In this example, Edwards’ uses personification to create a descriptive image of a rejecting world. This use of personification works because it invokes confusion and despair in the audience as they visualize a world that is always on the verge of rejection of the “sinful”; resulting in, an interpretation that sin can be detected on others and that people are sinful to the world yet God allows them to continue to live on it as a