"Don't stand there gawpin', like you've never seen the hand of God before!"
"I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky!"
— High Elf Priest (if clicked on enough times), Warcraft III
What does God look like? This has been the topic of many a debate. Artists have depicted God in many different ways, after all. Is God black or white? Man or woman? Does God even look like a person at all? What If God Was One of Us?
Or what if He's just a big, disembodied hand in the sky? Is it the hand of God? No, the hand is God.
Put simply, this is where a deity is depicted as a disembodied hand or hands. It may be implied that He still has a body somewhere, but it's obscured by mountains, clouds, light, energy, or any number of other things... or maybe it just isn't there at all. Usually, this hand will be giant-sized, coming out from the sky, and possibly accompanied by a booming voice, though those attributes aren't strictly necessary. For example, the hand of God which appears in the Book of Daniel is apparently normal size, appears inside a building, and is completely silent.
The important thing is that only the hand and at most part of the arm is ever seen. In medieval artwork, the hand of God was usually just that, stopping just before the wrist. Some depictions go a little bit further up the forearm. It will almost never reach the elbow, and if it reaches all the way to (or past) the shoulder, then it's definitely not this trope anymore.
This trope is Older Than Feudalism. The image of the hand to symbolize God occurs quite a lot in the Pentateuch, and it was popular in artwork from the late Antique and early Medieval periods when full-body images of God were considered close enough to idolatry to be heretical. Since hands are naturally the human body part most used for doing things, the disembodied hand therefore could be used to show agency and action from a supernatural force, without risking heresy by attempting to show the full form of God.
Is a subtrope of The Faceless. See also He Who Must Not Be Seen, A Form You Are Comfortable With, and Power of the God Hand.
Examples:
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- The US commercial for Tamagotchi Angel has two angels portrayed by tween girls talking about the Virtual Pet's features and bragging that theirs is better than the others. When one girl gets mad and turns into a demon, a massive pointing hand comes out of the clouds above them while a booming voice tells them to "Play nice!"
Anime & Manga
- The Great Will of the Macrocosm in Excel♡Saga appears as a pair of hands that extend out from a swirling energy vortex. She's the true form of Pedro's Sexy Wife.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: The gods appear on Earth as photorealistic limbs: Ramie appears as a giant arm, Silk appears as a giant pair of legs. When seen in Heaven though, they are of normal size (though they still have their photorealistic limbs).
Art
- In the art world, this is referred to as Manus Deinote or Dextera Domini / Dextera Deinote . The motif of God being depicted as a hand was particularly popular in late antique and early medieval era art, where depicting the full body of God was considered heretical as it came too close to idolatry. The Other Wiki has a page on it here
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Comic Books
- The DCU has The Presence, also known as The Voice, The Hand, and The Source who plays essentially the same role. His most directly visible role is being the source of power behind the Spectre's abilities, since the Spectre is, technically speaking, a Fallen Angel who repented, and as such gets micromanaged a fair bit more than usual just in case. As The Source, meanwhile, it shows up as a giant burning hand in the New Gods stories, and as witnessed by Krona created the Universe in that form (the "Big Hand" theory).
- In the graphic novel adaptation of The Eye of the World from The Wheel of Time: The Anti-God's attempt to escape his prison outside Creation is depicted as a massive taloned hand bursting from the ground. Being a Sentient Cosmic Force of evil, he has no physical form in the original series.
- Referenced in Rat Man of all things, in a very surreal and bizarre story. An evil publisher lets Rat-Man win an award as best comic book character, as part of his plan to capture and publish God, here represented as a huge hand looming over the horizon.
Eastern Animation
- Shinbi's Haunted House has "The Master", a God expy who appears as an enormous light in the sky with a booming voice, with two giant hands that appear when it wants to interact with something.
Films — Animation
- The Adventures of Mark Twain: In the Adam and Eve segment, God is depicted as a live-action hand in an otherwise entirely claymation world.
Films — Live-Action
- Played With in George of the Jungle and its Direct-to-Video sequel, where the narrator (something of a metaphorical God to the series) will frequently interfere with the plot by reaching down and fixing things himself, comically invoking the "hand of god" imagery.
- The poster for Monty Python and the Holy Grail depicts the right hand of God reaching out from a cloud and holding the titular grail.
- Played for Laughs in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, which also provides the page image. A British Army officer is opining about how "we'll always need a military, and may God strike me dead if it's ever otherwise." Cue Bolt of Divine Retribution doing just that, and a giant right hand withdrawing into a cloud bank afterwards. Which is immediately followed by a sergeant major lambasting his troops, "Don't stand there gawping, like you've never seen the hand of God before!"
- Pulp Fiction: God is referenced as the Hand that stops the bullets from killing Jules and Vincent. Vincent is less than convinced; Jules decides to change his life over it. The audience is left to decide for themselves, but Vincent's fate tends to indicate Jules was right.
Literature
- In Cultivation Chat Group, the 8th Heavenly Way used the appearance of huge transparent hands to capture the protagonist and move him to a special prison area that makes the world forget the prisoner.
- In The Stand, at the end, Randall Flagg tortures one of his men with a ball of electricity he'd conjured. At this point, there is a huge distraction, and Flagg loses concentration on the ball, and it flutters away. The distraction was the Trashcan Man, who'd found a nuclear bomb and towed it all the way back to Las Vegas. Flagg panics and tries to tell Trashcan to get rid of it. Then one of the men who'd been sent to challenge Flagg screams, "The Hand Of God!" and points. The ball of electricity had grown to an enormous size, it was heading straight for the nuclear bomb, and it looked just like a hand. You only get one guess as to what happened when it reached the bomb...
Live-Action TV
- Bottom: In "Hole", Richie and Eddie are saved from falling off a Ferris wheel by God, depicted as a giant hand. (Which then vanishes when they realise they don't actually believe in Him).
- In Monty Python's Flying Circus, the Church Police pray, "Oh Lord, we beseech thee tell us who croaked Leicester," whereupon a huge hand descends and points a finger at the culprit.
Music
- Year Zero: The Presence is an Eldritch Abomination that manifests itself as a disproportionately long black hand reaching down from the sky (and in the spectrogram of "My Violent Heart"). At first it's written off as just a drug-induced hallucination, but it makes itself publicly known in "The Warning", where it warns the people of the Oppressive States of America of their impending doom in a Godlike tone.
Some say it was a warningSome say it was a signI was standing right thereWhen it came down from the sky
Myths & Religion
- This trope does have some accuracy to The Bible where God was He Who Must Not Be Seen lest the viewer die or go mad. As such, God appears in A Form You Are Comfortable With, with perhaps the most famous being the burning bush that appeared before Moses. In the Book of Daniel, chapter 5, He fills this trope, appearing as a disembodied hand (or just fingers, depending on the translation) in the palace of King Belshazzar, where He writes a prophecy of doom on the wall, foretelling the judgment of Belshazzar's kingdom.
- Most decks of Tarot Cards have Ace cards that depict a giant disembodied hand extending from a cloud and holding a Sword, Cup, Staff, or Pentacle.
Video Games
- In Black & White (2001) and the sequel, A God Is You and the Themed Cursor is your hand. It morphs to match your place on the Karma Meter and is shown physically picking up items, casting Miracles, and interacting with your Bond Creature.
- Dungeon Keeper 2: The Dark Gods whom the Villain Protagonist venerates aren't described in any detail, but their Temples are designed with a large stone statue of a hand rising from a central sacrificial pool.
- Invoked in the manner of the Humans Are Cthulhu in Empires of the Undergrowth, with the Mad Scientist who studies the gene thief ant behavior in the wild. Only his hands are visible, and he acts as a Jerkass God to gene thief ants, frequently going on to make the life of their colony more difficult, purely for his own amusement. He even compares his hand to 'the hand of God' when he crushes ants with his finger.
- In Goat Simulator 3, if you lick a golden apple, you'll complete the "Forbidden Fruit" achievement, but a giant hand will periodically appear and zap you until you restart the game.
- The only part of God you see in Hell Pie is his giant hand.
- Super Smash Bros. has Master Hand, a huge glove-like hand that is responsible for creating the game's world by giving life to a bunch of toys. Later games add Crazy Hand as its equal, more chaotic counterpart. A popular theory is that Master Hand is actually the hand of a child who is only imagining their toys coming to life and pretending their hand is a monster for them to fight.
- In Warcraft III, the Alliance Themed Cursor is a metal gauntlet, leading to some units reacting to it as though it were the hand of God (and the Order of the Silver Hand was named after it).
Web Animation
- In Metal Gear Awesome, Jesus calls out God's name in disgust when Otacon gushes out urine on the entire room. God appears in this form and wonders aloud why He created humans to produce this gross stuff.
Webcomics
- Dark Water alludes to Someone above the "gods" (equine-shaped personifications of the elements) that Elide's inhabitants pray to; when it does so, the art shows a robed white hand- not Caucasian, but truly white- emerging from a cloud. The hand's owner is not explicitly stated to be the Judeo-Christian God, but the symbolism is obvious nonetheless.
- Sinfest: The God in the early years of Sinfest is literally a giant disembodied hand (sometimes two) poking from a cloud and a booming, disembodied voice. Sometimes He uses a hand puppet.
- Wingstix: This is how the god-like entity in this world, Man, is usually depicted.
Western Animation
- Adam (1992) is a satirical take on the Book of Genesis in which a disembodied hand creates Adam out of clay (it's a claymation short) and then screws with him for a while.
- In multiple episodes of Chowder, giant hands represent godly beings, whether the show's creator C.H. Grenblatt or the unnamed god character.
- The Simpsons:
- In one episode, Ned Flanders prays for divine intervention to save his son Todd, who is floating down a river. A branch falls, damming up the river and saving Todd, then a hand is seen in the sky making the "OK" sign.
- In the episode "Simpsons Bible Stories", God appears in the "Adam and Eve" segment as a giant hand from the sky. It's actually the hand of Ned Flanders, who is providing the voice for God in that segment.
- It's also worth mentioning that God is the only character in the entire series to have five fingers on each hand.
