Literary Response: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Steve Epting
AP English
Literary Response: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
“Their foot shall slide in due time.” This quote is the basis of the whole passage. It sets the tone of the entire passage. Jonathan Edwards speaks very forcefully to get his message across. The quote basically means that while we are down on this earth we will sin and we will have to pay for it if we are not saved. The title actually speaks for itself because it’s saying that the people who are doing wrong are placed in God’s angry hands and His wrath can strike any time.
This passage was written a very long time ago. It was written in about 1712, and the reason I could tell that it was an old passage was because of the word choice. The author used words such as thou, didst, castedst, hitherto, shalt, whet, thither, and heretofore. I didn’t know what some of those words meant. The author used examples of similes such as, “They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind.” There were also examples of personification such as “ …..hell opens its mouth to receive them…..” and “ …the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up.” The tone of this text is hostile and supercilious because it is angry and disdainful. The author appeals to pathos in this passage.
I don’t know who the audience is, but the author’s purpose was to tell people that the way they are acting now is going to send them to hell. The author depicted hell as the place that you never want to go. He explained it so well that I had a picture of it in my head. He was also trying to tell them that if they keep acting the way that they do, they will not see God, the sovereign. He based his text around a story from the bible when the Israelites were acting the same way the present day people were acting. They didn’t believe God and they didn’t care if they were going to heaven or hell. The author is taking the time out to warn the people about what is to come, so they won’t be condemned. The author talks about the people’s non-challant attitude towards heaven and hell and he said that their children will follow behind them and all of them will go to hell. The author is trying to save them from their wicked ways so that they can go to heaven.