The "Red Right Hand" is the hand of God, red on account of the way it strikes humans in punishing ways. Horace (23BC) wrote of the God Jupiter striking his own city and temple with his red right hand. Then, in 1667, in Milton's Paradise Lost, the fallen angel Baliol warns the other fallen angels not to go to war with God for fear of his "red right hand" striking them.
In Nick Cave's version (1994), he depicts the contradictory nature of God, at once a ghost (holy), a guru (preacher), a man (Jesus) and yet still threatening us that with "red right hand" of punishment for our sins, even after promising to answer our prayers for money, self-respect, cars, etc.
"God's plan," at once creating us all, and then punishing us all, is seen as bizarre and threatening: every human is merely "one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan Designed and directed by his red right hand."
The "Red Right Hand" is the hand of God, red on account of the way it strikes humans in punishing ways. Horace (23BC) wrote of the God Jupiter striking his own city and temple with his red right hand. Then, in 1667, in Milton's Paradise Lost, the fallen angel Baliol warns the other fallen angels not to go to war with God for fear of his "red right hand" striking them.
In Nick Cave's version (1994), he depicts the contradictory nature of God, at once a ghost (holy), a guru (preacher), a man (Jesus) and yet still threatening us that with "red right hand" of punishment for our sins, even after promising to answer our prayers for money, self-respect, cars, etc.
"God's plan," at once creating us all, and then punishing us all, is seen as bizarre and threatening: every human is merely "one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan Designed and directed by his red right hand."