What were the symbols of God's wrath in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

Jonathan Edwards uses many symbols in this 1741 sermon to express the extremity of God's wrath for those unfortunate souls who will, according to Edwards, suffer eternally unless they reform themselves quickly. Edwards relies, in part, on natural elements to symbolize and put into layman's terms the experience of God's anger. Below are six quoted examples from the sermon.

1. "the glowing Flames of the Wrath of God"


2. "black Clouds of God’s Wrath now hanging directly over your Heads"


3. "his rough Wind"


4. "like great Waters that are dammed for the present"


5. "fiery Floods of the Fierceness and Wrath of God"


6. "The Bow of God’s Wrath is bent"

The people living in New England in the 1700s lived very close to the natural world. Flames, black clouds, rough winds, and floodwaters were all destructive forces that could imperil earthly lives, and so Edwards chooses these phenomena to speak in terms that people could understand as terrifying and destructive when thinking of their afterlives. The final example, the bow, would have been a familiar and deadly weapon to a group of people who could easily imagine one wielded by an angry God.