A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is — a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.

Jones uses a vivid natural image—an enraged rattlesnake striking its own body—to argue that hatred is fundamentally self-destructive. Resentment feels like an offensive weapon aimed at an enemy, but it rebounds inward: it corrodes the hater’s peace, judgment, and spiritual health long before it meaningfully injures the target. The comparison also implies a kind of moral panic or corneredness: when the self is trapped by wounded pride or fear, it lashes out irrationally, even against its own interests. In Jones’s Christian moral framework, the remedy is not denial of wrongs but release—forgiveness and inner freedom—because the deepest damage of spite is the deformation of the self.