Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” SIMILES AND METAPHORS By: Kush Singh, Mohammed Mannan, Atharva Padhye, Shrey Bohra, and Nirmal Prakash

Similes “Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell…” (par. 4) This simile states that in the eyes of God, your sins make you as heavy as lead. This is in reference to an earlier theme that God is the force keeping all men from falling into hell.

Similes “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, and is dreadfully provoked” (par. 7) This simile compares God preventing you from falling into hell with a man holding a scary insect over a fire. The point is made that in both cases, God and Man, are provoked to let the “loathsome” creatures to fall to their death.

Metaphors If God should only withdraw His hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God…” (par. 5) This metaphor compares God holding back his wrath with a floodgate holding back a river. If God decides to “let himself go, ” his wrath would be as devastating as a flood resulting from the opening of a dam.

Metaphors “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow…” (par. 6) The concrete image of a bent bow, of God’s wrath represents how close God really is to unleashing his wrath upon the people.

Metaphors “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…” (par. 8) The concrete image that appears in the reader’s head is a burning furnace. The furnace represents the heat and Stygian setting of hell.

Metaphors “That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you” (par. 2) The concrete image is a lake that is burning from a sulfuric rock. The lake shows that underneath this lake is hell, which is said by the “world of misery”.

Metaphors “You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it…” (par. 9) The concrete image of the slender thread is used as a symbol of how close the people are to being punished by god.