Religious speakers throughout the ages have conveyed messages to their listeners, and there are few better examples than Jonathan Edwards and his sermon “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God.” Immediately, Edwards identifies his audience, the unbelievers, or, in his words, “natural men.” He also reveals the quickly, the first line discussing how sinners “are in the hand of God, over a pit of hell.” He goes on to further his message with the statement that all those that do not believe will be cast to hell, and implores those in his congregation to repent and turn from their old ways. Through the use of diction and figurative language, Edwards both terrifies and comforts those that listened to him.

            Jonathan Edwards was very clever in his use of diction, comparing humans to disgusting things and God to things of power and awe. At one point, Edwards compares humans to vipers, something his followers would have feared at the time. In another place, he calls them rebels, something that would have been insulting to the people of that time. However, when Edwards speaks of God, it is always with a voice filled with fear and awe. The wrath of God is compared to waters, which would have made the colonists remember the horrible conditions and the perpetual state of danger they were in on the boat over to what would eventually become the United States. He goes on to call God’s wrath a drawn bow, held back only by his love and mercy. This would have been a particularly effective when trying to frighten and comfort the settlers. It would have frightened the settlers, conjuring up images of the natives, whom they were constantly battling, but it would also comfort them, assuring them that God loves them, or else he would have let the arrow fly. He said that God thinks of them as “abominable,” and they are in the hands of an “angry” God.

            Edwards’ other technique used is figurative language, which he uses to show the severity and strength of God. One of the most remembered and a well-known line from the sermon is also an excellent example: “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you.” Not only does the passage convey a feeling of helplessness and terror, but it shows, Edwards wanted it to, how great and powerful God is. “The bow of God’s wrath is bent… and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God… that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.” This is another excellent example, because it both terrifies with the image of them run through with an arrow fired by God, but also comforts with the idea that God takes pleasure in us. Through both diction and figurative language, Jonathan Edwards showed both the terror and the love of God.