2

3
4
 Table of Cont ent s

BOOKS BY ROBERT ALTER

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

PREFACE

Chapter 1 - A Literary Approach to the Bible

Chapter 2 - Sacred History and the Beginnings of Prose Fiction

Chapter 3 - Biblical Ty pe-Scenes and the Uses of Conv ention

Chapter 4 - Between Narration and Dialogue

Chapter 5 - The Techniques of Repetition

Chapter 6 - Characterization and the Art of Reticence

Chapter 7 - Com posite Artistry

Chapter 8 - Narration and Knowledge

Chapter 9 - Conclusion

NOTES

GENERAL I NDEX

5
BI BLI CAL REFERENCE I NDEX

Copyright Page

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 BOOKS BY ROBERT ALTER

Rogue’s Progress
Fielding and the Nature of the Novel
After the Tradition
Modern Hebrew Literature
Partial Magic
Defenses of the I magination
A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal
Motives for Fiction
The Art of Biblical Poetry
The I nvention of Hebrew Prose
The Literary Guide to the Bible (co-editor with Frank Kerm ode)
The Pleasures of Reading in an I deological Age
Necessary Angels
The World of Biblical Literature
Hebrew and Modernity
Genesis
The David Story
Canon and Creativity
The Five Books of Moses
I magined Cities
Psalms
Pen of I ron
The Wisdom Books

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 For Alfred Appel
another kind of plexed artistry

8
 PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

The fate of books, like that of children, is usually not foreseeable by those who
bring them into the world. Like m any writers, I hav e m ore than once fostered
the illusion that a particular book of m ine was destined to m ake a great
im pression, only to discov er that its readership seem ed to be confined to
librarians and m y friends and relations. What happened, howev er, with The Art
of Biblical Narrative prov ed to be quite the opposite.

After hav ing stum bled onto this subject m ore or less by chance in the later
1 9 7 0s, a happy accident that led to four published articles, it occurred to m e
that I had som e possibly interesting ideas on how biblical narrativ e worked that
would be worth putting together in a book. I did not hav e a v ery clear idea at
the tim e about the potential audience for such a book, though, as with all m y
writing before then and since, I tried to put what I wanted to say in term s that
would be accessible to a general readership and at the sam e tim e would be
sufficiently rigorous to com m and the attention of scholars. I was not in the least
thinking of fram ing this work as a textbook, though it turned out that this is one
of the uses to which it has been put. The enthusiastic critical reception that the
book was giv en on its publication surprised m e a little, perhaps because I
thought I was going to annoy readers by ruffling scholarly feathers and
otherwise proposing a v iew of the Bible that m ight upset com m on
preconceptions. What was ev en m ore surprising to m e was that as tim e passed,
the book continued to sell steadily , and then, with the adv ent of e-m ail, readers
wrote m e, as they still do, to say how m uch the book had m eant to them . A
friend who alway s kept a close watch on academ ic m arket trends once said to
m e that the av erage shelf life of a work of literary scholarship was six y ears,
after which nobody cared about it. His rem ark was m ade som e fifteen y ears ago
in regard to the longev ity of The Art of Biblical Narrative, and now, thirty y ears
after its initial appearance, it still seem s to be a book that fills a felt need for
m any readers, whether their interest in the Bible is religious or literary ,
academ ic or cultural.

Writing around 1 9 80, I com plained in the first chapter and elsewhere in the
book about the woeful absence of literary understanding am ong professional

9
scholars of the Bible. Som e things hav e changed for the better ov er the past
three decades, but as is often the case with intellectual work, not entirely in the
way one would hav e hoped. Literary analy sis is now an accepted em phasis in
the guild of Bible scholars, and that is all to the good. (Som e rev iewers of m y
Bible translations in the past few y ears hav e attributed this dev elopm ent to m e,
but I am conv inced that this is a serious exaggeration. It would alm ost certainly
hav e happened any way , and The Art of Biblical Narrative was at m ost a m odest
cataly st in the process.) There has been som e excellent literary work on the
Bible in Am erica, England, France, Belgium , and Israel, but only in patches. I
would m ention fine books by Ilana Pardes and Yair Zakov itch in Israel, Robert
Kawashim a in this country , and the Vatican scholar Jean-Pierre Sonnet. But
som e who hav e em braced literary perspectiv es hav e chosen to ignore text-
critical analy sis and the rigors of philology , though ev en in the polem ic zeal of
The Art of Biblical Narrative, I m ade clear that these were indispensable tools for
dealing with ancient texts. Other Bible scholars, in the supposed interest of
literary understanding, hav e sought to apply to the Bible one or another
fashionable academ ic ideology —postcolonialism , gender studies, radical
fem inism , deconstruction. My own position rem ains what it was thirty y ears
ago—that the best way to get a handle on the Bible’s literary v ehicle is to av oid
im posing on it a grid external to it but instead to patiently attend to its m inute
w or k i n g s and through such attention inferentially build a picture of its
distinctiv e conv entions and techniques.

Going ov er the 1 9 81 book line by line has been instructiv e for m e, and I hope
the resulting rev isions will be useful to readers. I hav e corrected a few m inor
inaccuracies and added an occasional nuance or am plification to statem ents
m ade in the original v ersion. There are at least a few points about biblical
narrativ e that I hav e com e to understand better ov er the y ears. Som e of m y
argum ent with biblical sourcecriticism has been tem pered in this new v ersion,
and I am especially grateful to m y good friend and colleague Ron Hendel for
going through the book and m aking specific suggestions in this and other
regards. I hav e inserted a few new pages in the chapter on ty pe-scene because I
was try ing to define a particular ancient conv ention, and so it seem ed to m e
that som e issues of m ethodology —especially the relation of ty pe-scene to biblical
form -criticism —were worth clarify ing. The chapter on com posite artistry now

10
incorporates a few qualifications of the original argum ent because I hav e com e
to see that the discrim ination of m ultiple sources can be m ore fully em braced as
a com plem ent to literary analy sis than m y initial form ulations would lead one
to think. All in all, howev er, this rev ised v ersion rem ains basically the sam e
book as the one that appeared in 1 9 81 , but at least in som e regards I think it is
now tighter and m ore precise.

I should add that the m ost extensiv e rev isions are of the ad hoc translations I
originally did of all the biblical passages discussed in the book. Three decades
back, I was decidedly too m uch under the influence of the English translations of
the Bible that appeared in the 1 9 6 0s and 1 9 7 0s, and, especially , the New
Jewish Publication Society translation. I had no notion then that, beginning in
the m id-1 9 9 0s, I would becom e a translator of the Bible m y self. In doing that, I
quickly realized that a faithful and effectiv e English v ersion needed to em ulate
the distinctiv e sty listic traits of the Hebrew and follow wherev er possible its
purposeful sy ntactic contours. Though when I began, I was unsure whether it
was really feasible to do this in readable literary English, I becam e conv inced
through experience, and through the response of m any readers, that this was
not an entirely im possible undertaking. In light of m y recent experience as a
translator, I am rather aghast at the v ersions I did for the first edition of this
book, in which Hebrew sentences that begin with “and” are m ade to start with
“when,” “now,” “since,” and the like, and the lov ely eloquence of coordinate
clauses in the Hebrew is recast in m odernizing subordinate clauses that sound
like the daily newspaper. In all instances, then, I hav e substituted m y own
subsequently published translations, which cov er m ost of the passages cited,
and for a few others I hav e drawn on as y et unpublished translations that I hav e
done. I would hope that these English v ersions will conv ey to readers a better
sense of the literary allure and subtlety of the Hebrew narrativ es that the book
is m eant to illum inate. With these different translations, then, and with the
occasional am plification and tightening of the argum ent, I offer a refurbished
Art of Biblical Narrative that I trust retains the tim eliness of the original book.

Berkeley, California
September 2010

11
12
 PREFACE

This book is intended to be a guide to the intelligent reading of biblical

narrativ e. In the first two chapters I shall try to explain both the need for such a
guide and its conceptual rationale, but here a few words m ay be in order about
the procedures I shall follow and the origins of this project.

The aim throughout is to illum inate the distinctiv e principles of the Bible’s
narrativ e art. Num erous exam ples, both brief and extended, are analy zed, but
alway s with the purpose of illustrating general principles, not to prov ide a
com m entary , com prehensiv e or otherwise, on any particular passage. The term
“Bible” here will refer only to the Hebrew Bible. I adhere to the traditional
Jewish practice, now widely adopted by biblical scholars, of not using the
Christian designation, Old Testam ent, which im plies that the Old is com pleted
only in the New and that together they com prise one continuous work. There
are, of course, certain literary as well as theological continuities between the
Hebrew Bible and the New Testam ent, but the narrativ es of the latter were
written in a different language, at a later tim e, and, by and large, according to
different literary assum ptions. It therefore does not seem to m e that these two
bodies of ancient literature can be com fortably set in the sam e critical
fram ework, and, in any case, I would not hav e the linguistic and scholarly
com petence to deal with the New Testam ent. The Hebrew Bible itself is a
collection of works written at interv als ov er a stretch of sev en or eight
centuries; and since the narrativ e books like Esther and Daniel com posed in the
latter part of this period, after the Baby lonian Exile, generally reflect rather
new literary practices, I hav e concentrated on the great body of works for the
m ost part initially form ulated in the preexilic age, that is, the Pentateuch and
the Form er Prophets.

As far as possible, I hav e tried to m ake m y argum ent intelligible to the

general reader and at the sam e tim e precise enough to be instructiv e to those
who m ay hav e a m ore specialized knowledge of the Bible. When I began this
study , I hoped I m ight be able to throw som e new light on the Bible by bringing
a literary perspectiv e to bear on it. It is an aspiration I hav e not relinquished,
but I also discov ered for m y self som ething unanticipated in the course of

13
m inutely exam ining m any biblical texts: that the Bible on its part has a great
deal to teach any one interested in narrativ e because its seem ingly sim ple,
wonderfully com plex art offers such splendid illustrations of the prim ary
possibilities of narrativ e. This book, then, is directed to any one concerned with
the Bible, whether out of cultural or religious m otiv es, and also to students of
narrativ e. Readers in this last category will find no m ore than a couple of
passing allusions to the new narratology that has flourished in France and
Am erica ov er the last decade because, quite frankly , I find its usefulness
lim ited, and I am particularly suspicious of the v alue of elaborate taxonom ies
and skeptical as to whether our understanding of narrativ e is really adv anced
by the deploy m ent of bristling neologism s like analepsis, intradiegetic, actantial.
Occasionally , it has seem ed necessary to use an established technical term in
order to describe exactly a particular feature of sty le, sy ntax, or gram m ar, but I
cling to the belief that it is possible to discuss com plex literary m atters in a
language understandable to all educated people. Bey ond such considerations of
form ulation, m y approach differs from that of the new narratologists in m y
sense that it is im portant to m ov e from the analy sis of form al structures to a
deeper understanding of the v alues, the m oral v ision em bodied in a particular
kind of narrativ e. Precisely for that reason, I think this study m ay hav e
som ething to say to readers try ing to m ake sense of the Bible as a m om entous
docum ent of religious history .

The shape and m eaning of any literary text will naturally be dependent to
som e extent on its linguistic fashioning. Because of that fact, I refer
interm ittently to m atters of word-choice, sound-play , and sy ntax perceptible in
the original Hebrew, occasionally ev en offering alternativ e translations to
indicate a significant pun. All of this, I think, should be fairly easy for a reader
to follow without any knowledge of Hebrew; and the m ain topics I hav e chosen
are features of biblical narrativ e that for the m ost part can be observ ed
reasonably well in translation. (For this reason, I decided not to include a
chapter on sty le, which I had originally contem plated, because it would not
hav e been of m uch use to readers without Hebrew.) I hav e done m y own
translations of all biblical texts cited. The King Jam es Version, of course,
rem ains the m agisterial rendering in English, but ev en in its m odern rev ised
form it lacks a good deal in the way of clarity and philological precision, while

14
the v arious contem porary translations, in striv ing for just those two qualities,
tend to obliterate literary features of the original like expressiv e sy ntax,
deliberate am biguity , and purposeful repetition of words. My own v ersions at
tim es m ay seem a little awkward, but at least they hav e the v irtue of m aking
ev ident certain aspects of the original that play an im portant role in the
artistry of biblical narrativ e.

The earliest idea for this project began with an inv itation in 1 9 7 1 from the
Departm ent of Religion at Stanford Univ ersity to giv e an inform al colloquium
on the literary study of the Bible. That session, dev oted to Genesis 3 8 and 3 9
(echoes of which will be found in chapters 1 and 5 here), turned out to be rather
m ore successful than the carefully m editated public lectures on m odern Jewish
writing I was giv ing that week at Stanford. I put m y notes for the colloquium
away in a drawer, and som e four y ears later, on an im pulse, I asked the editors
of Commentary whether they would be interested in an article on the need for a
literary approach to the Bible. I am grateful to them for their receptiv ity , and
especially to Neal Kozodoy , who encouraged m e to m ake this backward leap of
alm ost three m illennia from m y usual period of critical specialization. I am
ev en m ore grateful to the readers of Commentary, so m any of whom wrote m e or
the m agazine after the appearance in Decem ber 1 9 7 5 of the first article (in
rev ised form , it now constitutes chapter 1 ) and conv inced m e that this was a
subject em inently worth pursuing. Three subsequent articles were published in
Commentary, in May 1 9 7 6 , October 1 9 7 8, and Nov em ber 1 9 80; these now form
part of chapter 5 and all of chapter 6 and chapter 8. Slightly shorter v ersions of
chapters 2 and 3 appeared, respectiv ely , in Poetics Today (Spring 1 9 80) and in
Critical I nquiry (Winter 1 9 7 8). I would like to thank the editors of all three
journals for their openness to a subject that m ight hav e seem ed outside the
chiefly m odern purv iew of their publications, and I want to express m y
appreciation for their willingness to place the articles in question at m y disposal
for this book.

Prelim inary v ersions of som e of the m aterial were tried out in the Buckstein
Mem orial Lectures at Trent Univ ersity , Ontario, at the Indiana Univ ersity
Institute on Teaching the Bible in Literature Courses, and at a conference on
biblical literature sponsored by the Univ ersity of California at San Diego; and in
each case the intelligent responsiv eness of the audience helped im prov e the final

15
v ersion. I hav e also learned m uch from the keenness of m y students in two
graduate sem inars on biblical narrativ e taught at the Univ ersity of California
at Berkeley . My colleague Tom Rosenm ey er was kind enough to respond in
critical detail to the published segm ents of this study , and, though he m ay not
agree with ev ery thing I finally say , his good judgm ent and learning hav e sav ed
m e m ore than once from inv idious sim plifications of the Greeks.

Ty ping and incidental research costs were cov ered through the assistance of
the Com m ittee on Research of the Univ ersity of California at Berkeley . The
ty ping itself was done by Florence My er with her usual m eticulous care.
Finally , I would also like to thank the m any biblical scholars who hav e
encouraged m e in this undertaking, a few of them old friends, others whom I
cam e to know through the publication of the first two articles. In m y polem ic
beginning, I im agined, as I suppose m ost of us som etim es like to im agine, that I
was going to ruffle a lot of feathers; instead, what I hav e discov ered for the m ost
part am ong professionals in the field is a generous receptiv ity to m y ideas.

Berkeley, California
August 1980

16
 1

A Literary Approach to the Bible

WHAT ROLE DOES literary art play in the shaping of biblical narrativ e? A
crucial one, I shall argue, finely m odulated from m om ent to m om ent,
determ ining in m ost cases the m inute choice of words and reported details, the
pace of narration, the sm all m ov em ents of dialogue, and a whole network of
ram ified interconnections in the text. Before we weigh the theoretical
considerations that m ay explain why this should be so, and also the
circum stances of intellectual history that hav e prev ented this essential literary
dim ension from being sufficiently observ ed, it would be well to follow the
sustained operation of narrativ e art in a biblical text.

Let m e propose for analy sis a supposedly interpolated story , because it will
giv e us an opportunity to observ e both how it works in itself and how it interacts
with the surrounding narrativ e m aterial. I should like to discuss, then, the
story of Tam ar and Judah (Genesis 3 8), which is set in between the selling of
Joseph by his brothers and Joseph’s appearance as a slav e in the household of
Potiphar. This story is characterized by E. A. Speiser, in his fine Genesis v olum e
in the Anchor Bible series, as “a com pletely independent unit,” hav ing “no
connection with the dram a of Joseph, which it interrupts at the conclusion of
Act I.” 1 The alleged interpolation does, of course, as Speiser and others hav e
recognized, build a sense of suspense about the fate of Joseph and a feeling of
tim e elapsed until Joseph shows up in Egy pt, but Speiser’s failure to see its
intim ate connections through m otif and them e with the Joseph story suggests
the lim itations of conv entional biblical scholarship ev en at its best. I shall begin
with the last fiv e v erses of Genesis 3 7 in order to m ake clear the links between
fram e-narrativ e and interpolation. My translation will at a num ber of points be
deliberately literal to reproduce v erbal repetitions or sy ntactic peculiarities of
the original for the purposes of analy sis.

Joseph’s brothers, one recalls, after selling him into slav ery , dip his cherished
tunic in goat’s blood to show to their father.

17
 “They sent the ornam ented tunic and had it brought to their father [note the
indirection of their approach to Jacob, ev en m ore m arked in the Hebrew
sy ntax], and they said: ‘This [zot] we found. Recognize, pray [haker-na], is it
y our son’s tunic or not?’” (Gen. 3 7 :3 2 ). The brothers are careful to let the
contriv ed object, “this [zot],” do their ly ing for them —it goes before them
literally and sy ntactically —and of course they appropriately refer to Joseph as
“y our son,” not by nam e nor as their brother. Jacob now has his prop, and from
here on he can im prov ise his own part: “He recognized it [vayakirah], and he
said: ‘It is m y son’s tunic! A v icious beast has dev oured him , / Joseph is torn to
shreds!” (Gen. 3 7 :3 3 ). Haker, the v erb for recognition (which we will be seeing
m ore of), stated by the brothers in the im perativ e, im m ediately recurs in the
perfect tense, Jacob responding at once as the puppet of his sons’ m anipulation.

It should be observ ed (I am not sure the scholars hav e) that when Jacob goes
on here to inv ent a disastrous explanation, left unstated by his sons, for the
bloodied tunic, his speech (“A v icious beast ...”) switches into form al v erse, a
neat sem antic parallelism that scans with three beats in each v erset: ḥayáh
raʿáh ʾakhaláthu / taróf toráf Yoséf. Poetry is heightened speech, and the shift to
form al v erse suggests an elem ent of self-dram atization in the way Jacob picks
up the hint of his son’s supposed death and declaim s it m etrically before his
fam ilial audience. If this seem s fanciful, I would direct attention to how Jacob’s
bereav em ent is described in the next two v erses: “Jacob rent his clothes and put
sackcloth on his loins, and keened for his son m any day s. All his sons and
daughters tried to console him but he refused to be consoled, say ing, ‘Rather, I
will go down to m y son in Sheol m ourning,’ thus did his father bewail him ”
(Gen. 3 7 :3 4 –3 5). In two brief v erses half a dozen different activ ities of
m ourning are recorded, including the refusal to be consoled and direct speech in
which the father expresses the wish to m ourn until he joins his son in death.
(Later, ironically , he will “go down” to his son not to Sheol, the underworld, but
to Egy pt.) One can hardly dism iss all these gestures of m ourning as standard
Near Eastern practice, since the degree of specification and sy nony m ity is far
bey ond the norm s of the narrativ e itself. Thus, just a few v erses earlier (Gen.
3 7 :2 9 ), when Reuben im agines Joseph is dead, his sincere sense of bereav em ent
is expressed quite sim ply with “He rent his clothes”—in the Hebrew only two
words and a particle.

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 Finally , the extrav agance of Jacob’s m ourning is pointed up by the v erse that
im m ediately follows it and concludes the episode: “But the Midianites had sold
him into Egy pt to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s courtier, the high cham berlain” (Gen.
3 7 :3 6 ). Modern translations usually render the initial vav of this v erse with
som ething like “m eanwhile,” but that loses the artful am biguity of the Bible’s
parataxis. In this cunningly additiv e sy ntax, on the sam e unbroken narrativ e
continuum in which Jacob is m ourning his supposedly dev oured son, Midianites
are selling the liv ing lad: “And his father bewailed him but the Midianites had
sold him ”—for ev en the sentence break would not hav e been ev ident in the
ancient text. (The sam e particle vav introduces each of these two clauses, ev en if
it has an adv ersativ e sense in the second clause.) The original sy ntax, as noted,
does indicate som e opposition and probably a past perfect sense of the v erb by
placing the subject before the v erb (“the Midianites had sold him ”), not the
norm al Hebrew order, and by switching the v erb form when the Midianites are
introduced. In any case, the transition from Jacob m ourning to Joseph sold is
m ore nearly seam less, less relationally m arked, than m odern translations m ake
it seem .

At this point (Genesis 3 8), with an appropriately am biguous form ulaic tim e
indication, vayehi baʿet hahi, “And it happened at that tim e,” the narrativ e
leav es Joseph and launches on the enigm atic story of Tam ar and Judah. From
the v ery beginning of the excursus, howev er, pointed connections are m ade
with the m ain narrativ e through a whole series of explicit parallels and
contrasts:
1 . And it happened at this tim e that Judah went down from his brothers
and pitched his tent by an Adullam ite nam ed Hirah. 2 . And Judah saw
there the daughter of a Canaanite m an nam ed Shua, and he took her and
cam e to bed with her. 3 . And she conceiv ed and bore a son and called his
nam e Er. 4 . And she conceiv ed again and bore a son and called his nam e
Onan. 5. And she bore still another son and called his nam e Shelah, and
he was in Chezib when she bore him . 6 . And Judah took a wife for Er his
firstborn, and her nam e was Tam ar. 7 . And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was
ev il in the ey es of the LORD, and the LORD put him to death. 8. And
Judah said to Onan, “Com e to bed with y our brother’s wife and do y our
duty as brother-in-law for her and raise up seed for y our brother.” 9 . And

19
 Onan knew that the seed would not be his, and so when he would com e to
bed with his brother’s wife, he would waste his seed on the ground, so to
giv e no seed to his brother. 1 0. And what he did was ev il in the ey es of the
LORD, and He put him to death as well. 1 1 . And Judah said to Tam ar his
daughter-in-law, “Stay a widow in y our father’s house until Shelah m y
son is grown up,” for he thought, Lest he, too, die like his brothers. And
Tam ar went and stay ed at her father’s house.

The story begins with Judah parting from his brothers, an act conv ey ed with
a rather odd locution, vayered mʾet, literally , “he went down from ,” and which
undoubtedly has the purpose of connecting this separation of one brother from
the rest with Joseph’s, transm itted with the sam e v erb-root (see, for exam ple,
the v ery beginning of the next chapter: “Joseph was brought down [hurad] to
Egy pt”). There is them atic justification for the connection since the tale of
Judah and his offspring, like the whole Joseph story , and indeed like the entire
Book of Genesis, is about the rev ersal of the iron law of prim ogeniture, about the
election through som e dev ious twist of destiny of a y ounger son to carry on the
line. There is, one m ight add, genealogical irony in the insertion of this m aterial
at this point of the story , for while Joseph, next to the y oungest of the sons, will
ev entually rule ov er his brothers in his own lifetim e as splendidly as he has
dream ed, it is Judah, the fourthborn, who will be the progenitor of the kings of
Israel, as the end of Genesis 3 8 will rem ind us.

In any case, the preceding block of narrativ e had ended with a father
bem oaning what he believ ed to be the death of his son. Genesis 3 8 begins with
Judah fathering three sons, one after another, recorded in breathless pace.
Here, as at other points in the episode, nothing is allowed to detract our focused
attention from the prim ary , problem atic subject of the proper channel for the
seed (since this is thought of both figurativ ely and in the m ost concretely
phy sical way , I hav e translated it literally throughout). In a triad of v erbs that
adm its nothing adv entitious, Judah sees, takes, lies with a wom an; and she,
responding appropriately , conceiv es, bears, and—the necessary com pletion of
the genealogical process—giv es the son a nam e. Then, with no narrativ e
indication of any ev ents at all in the interv ening tim e, we m ov e ahead an

20
entire generation to the inexplicable death (“was ev il in the ey es of the LORD”)
of Er, Judah’s firstborn, after his m arriage to Tam ar. The firstborn v ery often
seem to be losers in Genesis by the v ery condition of their birth—the epithet
“firstborn,” hardly needed as identification, is asserted twice here, alm ost as
though it explained why Er displeased God—while an inscrutable, unpredictable
principle of election other than the “natural” one works itself out. The second
son, Onan, howev er, m akes the m istake of rebelling by coitus interruptus
against the legal obligations of the sy stem of prim ogeniture, refusing to act as
his dead brother’s proxy by im pregnating the widow in the brother’s nam e, and
so he, too, dies. Interestingly , after we hav e been exposed to Jacob’s extrav agant
procedures of m ourning ov er the im agined death of one son, Judah’s reaction to
the actual death in quick sequence of two sons is passed ov er in com plete silence:
he is only reported deliv ering pragm atic instructions hav ing to do with the next
son in line. If this striking contrast underscores Jacob’s excesses, it surely also
m akes us wonder whether there is a real lack of responsiv eness in Judah, and
thus indicates how parallel acts or situations are used to com m ent on each other
in biblical narrativ e.

After the death of the second son, the narrator giv es us (Gen. 3 8:1 1 ) Judah’s
direct speech to Tam ar as well as Judah’s interior speech explaining his m otiv e,
but no response on the part of Tam ar is recorded. This m ay suggest silent
subm ission, or at least her lack of any legal options as a childless y oung widow,
and it certainly leav es us wondering about what she is feeling—som ething that
her actions will presently elucidate. There is one sm all but tactically effectiv e
hint that Judah is in the wrong: when he addresses Tam ar, she is identified as
“Tam ar his daughter-in-law,” an otherwise superfluous designation that
rem inds us of his legal obligation to prov ide her a husband from am ong his sons.

At this point we are giv en another tim e indication to m ark the next stage of
the story , in which the tem po of narration will slow down drastically to attend
to a crucial central action:
1 2 . And a long tim e passed, and the daughter of Shua, Judah’s wife, died,
and after the m ourning period Judah went up to his sheepshearers, he
with Hirah the Adullam ite his friend, to Tim nah.

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 All the inform ation in this v erse is essential for what follows. Tam ar has been
allowed to linger m ateless “a long tim e,” so that her own perception, reported
two v erses later, that she has been deliberately neglected is giv en an objectiv e
grounding. Judah has been widowed and the official period of m ourning has
passed—it is worth recalling the literal m eaning, “was consoled,” indicating the
end of m ourning—because it stands in contrast to Jacob’s prev ious refusal to be
con soled—so Tam ar can plausibly infer that Judah is in a state of sexual
neediness. Here begins her bold plan:
1 3 . And Tam ar was told, say ing, “Look, y our father-in-law is going up to
Tim nah to shear his sheep.” 1 4 . And she took off her widow’s garb and
cov ered herself with a v eil and sat by the entrance to Enaim , which is on
the road to Tim nah, for she saw that Shelah had grown up and she had
not been giv en to him as wife. 1 5. And Judah saw her and took her for a
whore, for she had cov ered her face. 1 6 . And he turned aside to her by the
road and said, “Here, pray , let m e com e to bed with y ou.” And she said,
“What will y ou giv e m e for com ing to bed with m e?” 1 7 . And he said, “I
will personally send a kid from the flock.” And she said, “Only if y ou giv e
a pledge till y ou send it.” 1 8. And he said, “What pledge shall I giv e y ou?”
And she said, “Your seal-and-cord, and the staff in y our hand.” And he
gav e them to her and he cam e to bed with her and she conceiv ed by him .
1 9 . And she rose and went her way and took off the v eil she was wearing
and put on her widow’s garb. 2 0. And Judah sent the kid by the hand of
his friend the Adullam ite to take back the pledge from the wom an’s hand,
and he did not find her. 2 1 . And he asked the m en of the place, say ing,
“Where is the cult-harlot, the one at Enaim by the road?” And they said,
“There has been no cult-harlot here.” 2 2 . And he returned to Judah and
said, “I could not find her,” and the m en of the place said as well, “There
has been no cult-harlot here.” 2 3 . And Judah said, “Let her take them ,
lest we be a laughingstock. Look, I sent this kid and y ou could not find
her.”

Until this point Tam ar had been a passiv e object, acted upon—or, alas, not
acted upon—by Judah and his sons. The only v erbs she was the subject of were
the two v erbs of com pliance and retreat, to go off and dwell, at the end of v erse

22
1 1 . Now, a clear perception of injustice done her is ascribed to Tam ar (v erse 1 4 ),
and she suddenly races into rapid, purposeful action, expressed in a detonating
series of v erbs: in v erse 1 4 she quickly takes off, cov ers, wraps herself, sits down
at the strategic location, and after the encounter, in v erse 1 9 , there is another
chain of four v erbs to indicate her brisk resum ption of her form er role and
attire. (One m ight usefully com pare this to the rapid series of v erbs attached to
Rebekah’s activ ities [Gen. 2 7 :1 4 –1 7 ] as she prepares through another kind of
deception to wrest the blessing from Isaac for her son Jacob.) Judah takes the
bait—his sexual appetite will not tolerate postponem ent, though he has been
content to let Tam ar languish as a childless widow indefinitely —and here we are
giv en the only extended dialogue in the story (v erses 1 6 –1 8). It is a wonderfully
businesslike exchange, reinforced in the Hebrew by the constant quick shifts
from the literally repeated “he said” (vayomer) to “she said” (vatomer). Wasting
no tim e with prelim inaries, Judah im m ediately tells her, “Let m e com e to bed
with y ou” (literally , “let m e enter y ou”), to which Tam ar responds like a
hardheaded businesswom an, finally exacting the rather serious pledge of
Judah’s seal and cord and staff, which as the legal surrogate of the bearer would
hav e been a kind of ancient Near Eastern equiv alent of all a person’s m ajor
credit cards.

The agreem ent com pleted, the narrativ e proceeds in three quick v erbs (the
end of v erse 1 8)—he gav e, he cam e to bed with, she conceiv ed—to Tam ar’s
single-m inded purpose, which, from her first m arriage, has been to becom e the
channel of the seed of Judah. When the Adullam ite com es looking for Tam ar, he
asks, decorously enough, for a cult-harlot (qedeshah), though Judah had in fact
thought he was dealing with an ordinary whore (zonah). 2 The local people
answer quite properly that there has been no qedeshah in that place, an
assertion that receiv es special em phasis through the narrativ e contriv ance by
which it is repeated v erbatim in Hirah’s report to Judah. Nor, we m ay be led to
think, has there been a zonah in that place, but only a wronged wom an taking
justice into her own hands. We are now prepared for the clim ax of the story .

2 4 . And it happened about three m onths later that Judah was told,
“Tam ar y our daughter-in-law has play ed the whore [zantah] and what’s
m ore, she’s conceiv ed by her whoring [zenunim].” And Judah said, “Take

23
 her out to be burned.”

The naked unreflectiv e brutality of Judah’s response to the seem ingly

incrim inating news is ev en stronger in the original, where the sy nthetic
character of biblical Hebrew reduces his deadly instructions to two words:
hotziʾuha vetisaref. As elsewhere, nothing adv entitious is perm itted to interv ene
between intention and fulfilled purpose, and so the next two words of the text go
on from Judah’s com m and alm ost as if there had been no tim e lapse, as though
there were no perceptible interv al between m agically powerful speech and the
results of speech: Judah say s, hotziʾuha, take her out, and the next two words,
in a rare present passiv e participle, are vehi mutzʾet, literally , “And she is being
taken out.” But this is the last instant before Tam ar’s trium phant rev elation:
2 5. Out she was taken, when she said to her father-in-law, “By the m an to
whom these belong I hav e conceiv ed,” and she said, “Recognize, pray
[haker-na], whose are this seal-and-cord and this staff?” 2 6 . And Judah
recognized [vayaker] them and he said, “She is m ore in the right than I,
for hav e I not failed to giv e her to Shelah m y son?” And he knew her
again no m ore.

The whole inset of Genesis 3 8 then concludes with four v erses dev oted to
Tam ar’s giv ing birth to twin boy s, her aspiration to becom e the m other of m ale
offspring realized twofold. Confirm ing the pattern of the whole story and of the
larger cy cle of tales, the twin who is about to be secondborn som ehow “bursts
forth” (parotz) first in the end, and he is Peretz, progenitor of Jesse from whom
com es the house of Dav id.

If som e readers m ay hav e been skeptical about the intentionality of the

analogies I hav e proposed between the interpolation and the fram e-story , such
doubts should be laid to rest by the exact recurrence at the clim ax of Tam ar’s
story of the form ula of recognition, haker-na and vayaker, used before with
Jacob and his sons. The sam e v erb, m oreov er, will play a crucial them atic role
in the dénouem ent of the Joseph story when he confronts his brothers in Egy pt,
he recognizing them , they failing to recognize him . This precise recurrence of
the v erb in identical form s at the ends of Genesis 3 7 and 3 8 respectiv ely is

24
m anifestly the result not of som e autom atic m echanism of interpolating
different traditional m aterials by the sam e writer, J, but of careful splicing of
sources or traditions by J, who is a brilliant literary artist. (Alternativ ely , the
seem ingly interpolated story m ay sim ply be his own contriv ance.) The first use
of the form ula was for an act of deception; the second use is for an act of
unm asking. Judah with Tam ar after Judah with his brothers is an exem plary
narrativ e instance of the deceiv er deceiv ed, and since he was the one who
proposed selling Joseph into slav ery instead of killing him (Gen. 3 7 :2 6 –2 7 ), he
can easily be thought of as the leader of the brothers in the deception practiced
on their father. Now he becom es their surrogate in being subject to a bizarre but
peculiarly fitting principle of retaliation, taken in by a piece of attire, as his
father was, learning through his own obstreperous flesh that the div inely
appointed process of election cannot be thwarted by hum an will or social
conv ention. In the m ost artful of contriv ances, the narrator shows him exposed
through the sy m bols of his legal self giv en in pledge for a kid (gedi ʿizim), as
before Jacob had been tricked by the garm ent em blem atic of his lov e for Joseph,
which had been dipped in the blood of a goat (seʿir ʿizim). Finally , when we
return from Judah to the Joseph story (Genesis 3 9 ), we m ov e in pointed
contrast from a tale of exposure through sexual incontinence to a tale of seem ing
defeat and ultim ate trium ph through sexual continence—Joseph and Potiphar’s
wife.

It is instructiv e that the two v erbal cues indicating the connection between
the story of the selling of Joseph and the story of Tam ar and Judah were duly
noted m ore than 1 ,500 y ears ago in the Midrash: “The Holy One Praised be He
said to Judah, ‘You deceiv ed y our father with a kid. By y our life, Tam ar will
deceiv e y ou with a kid.’ ... The Holy One Praised be He said to Judah, ‘You said
to y our father, haker-na. By y our life, Tam ar will say to y ou, haker-na’”
(Bereishit Rabba 84 :1 1 , 1 2 ). This instance m ay suggest that in m any cases a
literary student of the Bible has as m uch to learn from the traditional
com m entaries as from m odern scholarship. The difference between the two is
ultim ately the difference between assum ing that the text is an intricately
interconnected unity , as the m idrashic exegetes did, and assum ing it is a
patchwork of frequently disparate docum ents, as m ost m odern scholars hav e
supposed. (In the case we are considering, the source critics do assign both blocks

25
of m aterial to one docum ent but nev ertheless tend to v iew the narrativ e
m aterial in Genesis 3 8 as a kind of interruption.) With their assum ption of
interconnectedness, the m akers of the Midrash were often as exquisitely attuned
to sm all v erbal signals of continuity and to significant lexical nuances as any
“close reader” of our own age.

There are, howev er, two essential distinctions between the way the text is
treated in the Midrash and the literary approach I am proposing. First,
although the Midrashists did assum e the unity of the text, they had little sense
of it as a real narrativ e continuum , as a coherent unfolding story in which the
m eaning of earlier data is progressiv ely , ev en sy stem atically , rev ealed or
enriched by the addition of subsequent data. What this m eans practically is
that the Midrash prov ides exegesis of specific phrases or narrated actions but not
continu ou s readings of the biblical narrativ es: sm all pieces of the text becom e
the foundations of elaborate hom iletical structures that hav e only an
interm ittent relation to the integral story told by the text.

The second respect in which the m idrashic approach to the biblical narrativ es
does not really recognize their literary integrity is the didactic insistence of
m idrashic interpretation. One m ight note that in the form ulation recorded in
the passage just cited from Bereishit Rabba, God Him self adm inisters a m oral
rebuke to the twice-sinning Judah, pointing out to him the recurrence of the kid
and of the v erb “to recognize” that links his unjust deception of his father with
his justified deception by Tam ar. That them atic point of retaliation, as we hav e
seen, is intim ated in the biblical text, but without the suggestion that Judah
him self is conscious of the connections. That is, in the actual literary
articulation of the story , we as audience are priv ileged with a knowledge denied
Judah, and so the link between kid and kid, recognize and recognize, is part of a
pattern of dram atic irony , in which the spectator knows som ething the
protagonist doesn’t and should know. The preserv ation of Judah’s ignorance
here is im portant, for the final turn of his painful m oral education m ust be
withheld for the quandary in which he will find him self later when he
encounters Joseph as v iceroy of Egy pt without realizing his brother’s identity .
The Midrash, on the other hand, concentrating on the present m om ent in the
text and on underscoring a m oral point, m ust m ake things m ore explicit than
the biblical writer intended.

26
 Indeed, an essential aim of the innov ativ e technique of fiction worked out by
the ancient Hebrew writers was to produce a certain indeterm inacy of
m eaning, especially in regard to m otiv e, m oral character, and psy chology .
(Later we shall look at this indeterm inacy in detail when we consider
characterization in the Bible.) Meaning, perhaps for the first tim e in narrativ e
literature, was conceiv ed as a process, requiring continual rev ision—both in the
ordinary sense and in the ety m ological sense of seeing-again—continual
suspension of judgm ent, weighing of m ultiple possibilities, brooding ov er gaps in
the inform ation prov ided. As a step in the process of m eaning of the Joseph
story , it is exactly right that the filial betray al of Genesis 3 7 and the daughter-
in-law’s deception of Genesis 3 8 should be aligned with one another through the
indirection of analogy , the parallels tersely suggested but nev er spelled out with
a them atically unam biguous closure, as they are in the Midrash.

These notes on the story of Judah and Tam ar are not, of course, by any m eans
an exhaustiv e analy sis of the m aterial in question, but they m ay illustrate the
usefulness of try ing to look carefully into the literary art of a biblical text. This
sort of critical discussion, I would contend, far from neglecting the Bible’s
religious character, focuses attention on it in a m ore nuanced way . The im plicit
theology of the Hebrew Bible dictates a com plex m oral and psy chological
realism in biblical narrativ e because God’s purposes are alway s entram m eled in
history , dependent on the acts of indiv idual m en and wom en for their
continuing realization. To scrutinize biblical personages as fictional characters
is to see them m ore sharply in the m ultifaceted, contradictory aspects of their
hum an indiv iduality , which is the biblical God’s chosen m edium for His
experim ent with Israel and history . Such scrutiny , howev er, as I hope I hav e
shown, cannot be based m erely on an im aginativ e im pression of the story but
m ust be undertaken through m inute critical attention to the biblical writer’s
articulations of narrativ e form .

It is a little astonishing that at this late date literary analy sis of the Bible of
the sort I hav e tried to illustrate here in this prelim inary fashion is only in its
infancy . By literary analy sis I m ean the m anifold v arieties of m inutely
discrim inating attention to the artful use of language, to the shifting play of
ideas, conv entions, tone, sound, im agery , sy ntax, narrativ e v iewpoint,

27
com positional units, and m uch else; the kind of disciplined attention, in other
words, that through a whole spectrum of critical approaches has illum inated,
for exam ple, the poetry of Dante, the play s of Shakespeare, the nov els of Tolstoy .
The general absence of such critical discourse on the Hebrew Bible is all the
m ore perplexing when one recalls that the m asterworks of Greek and Latin
antiquity hav e in recent decades enjoy ed an abundance of astute literary
analy sis, so that we hav e learned to perceiv e subtleties of ly ric form in
Theocritus as in Marv ell, com plexities of narrativ e strategy in Hom er or Virgil
as in Flaubert.

In m aking such a sweeping negativ e assertion about biblical criticism , I m ay

be suspected of polem ical distortion im pelled by the anim us of a m odern literary
person against antiquarian scholarship, but I do not think this is the case. There
has been, of course, a v ast am ount of scholarly work on the Bible ov er the past
hundred y ears or m ore. It would be easy to m ake light of the endless welter of
hy potheses and counterhy potheses generated in ev ery thing from textual
criticism to issues of large historical chronology ; but the fact is that, howev er
wrongheaded or extrav agantly perv erse m any of the scholars hav e been, their
enterprise as a whole has enorm ously adv anced our understanding of the Bible.
Virtually all this activ ity has been what we m ight call “excav ativ e”—either
literally , with the archeologist’s spade and reference to its findings, or with a
v ariety of analy tic tools intended to uncov er the original m eanings of biblical
words, the life situations in which specific texts were used, the sundry sources
from which longer texts were assem bled. Although m uch rem ains debatable—
necessarily so, when we are separated from the origins of the texts by three
m illennia—the m aterial unearthed by scholarship has clearly dispelled m any
confusions and obscurities.

Let m e offer one brief exam ple. The ancient city of Ugarit at the site of Ras
Sham ra on the Sy rian coast, first excav ated in 1 9 2 9 , has y ielded a wealth of
texts in a Sem itic language closely cognate to biblical Hebrew, som e of them
strikingly parallel in sty le and poetic conv ention to fam iliar biblical passages.
Am ong other things, the Ugaritic texts report in epic detail a battle between the
warrior god, Baal, and the sea god, Yam m . Suddenly , a whole spate of dim ly
apprehended allusions in Psalm s and Job cam e into focus: an antecedent epic
tradition had been assim ilated into the recurrent im agery of God’s breaking the

28
fury of the elem ental sea or shackling a prim ordial sea m onster. Thus, when Job
cries out (Job 7 :1 2 ), ha-yam ʾani ʾim tanin, he is not asking rhetorically
whether he is the sea (yam), but, with a pointed sardonic allusion to the
Canaanite m y th, he is say ing: “Am I Yam m , am I the Sea Beast, that y ou
should set a guard ov er m e?”

Excav ativ e scholarship, then, dem onstrably has its place as a necessary first
step to the understanding of the Bible, but until the last few y ears there was
little ev idence that m uch m ore than excav ation was going on, except, of course,
for the perennial speculations of the theologians built on biblical texts. A
sy stem atic surv ey of the state of knowledge in the field, Herbert F. Hahn’s The
Old Testament in Modern Research, 3 delineates source analy sis, anthropology ,
sociology , com parativ e religion, form criticism , archeology , and theology as the
relev ant m ajor areas of professional study —but nothing at all that any literary
person would recognize as literary inquiry . The unev en but som etim es v aluable
literary com m entary occasionally prov ided by such scholars as Um berto
Ca ssu t o and Luis Alonso-Schökel (the form er writing m ainly in Hebrew, the
latter in Spanish and Germ an) was apparently deem ed so peripheral to the
discipline as not to be worthy of categorization.

Still m ore rev ealing as a sy m ptom of the need for a literary perspectiv e is Otto
Eissfeldt’s m assiv e The Old Testament: An I ntroduction, 4 widely regarded as one
of the m ost authoritativ e general reference works in the field. Most of Eissfeldt’s
considerations, of course, are purely excav ativ e, but when the nature of the
biblical m aterials confronts him with literary categories, his apparent
authoritativ eness begins to look shaky . Thus, he div ides biblical narrativ e into
m y ths, fairy tales, sagas, legends, anecdotes, and tales, using these problem atic
term s with a casualness and a seem ing indifference to their treatm ent in other
disciplines that are quite dism ay ing. Or again, his eight-page sum m ary of
conflicting scholarly theories on biblical prosody painfully illustrates how the
scholars hav e read biblical poetry with roughly the intellectual apparatus
appropriate to the decipherm ent of cuneiform inscriptions, m ultiply ing
confusion by the inv ention of elaborate pseudo-m athem atical sy stem s of
scansion or by the wholesale im portation of term s and concepts from Greek
prosody . The latest trend, m oreov er, in describing biblical prosody is a sy stem of

29
sy llable-counting proposed by the Am erican scholar Dav id Noel Freedm an and
by others, which reflects the m ost unlikely conception of how lines of poetry
operate and also requires a not entirely certain reconstruction of the original
Hebrew v owel-sy stem . The inadequacy of all this becom es transparent when
one com pares it to the wonderfully incisiv e analy sis of biblical v erse as a
“sem antic-sy ntactic-accentual” rhy thm by Benjam in Hrushov ski (in his later
publications, Harshav )—not a Bible scholar but a leading authority in the field
of poetics and com parativ e literature—in his sy noptic article on Hebrew prosody
for the 1 9 7 1 edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica. In a few packed paragraphs,
Hrushov ski m anages to cut through generations of confusion and to offer a
general account of biblical prosody at once plausible and elegantly sim ple,
av oiding the far-fetched structures and the strained term inology of his
predecessors.

Ov er the last few y ears, there has been growing interest in literary
approaches am ong the y ounger generation of Bible scholars—in this country ,
especially those associated with the new journal Semeia—but, while useful
explications of particular texts hav e begun to appear, there hav e been as y et no
m ajor works of criticism , and certainly no satisfy ing ov erv iews of the poetics of
the Hebrew Bible. As elsewhere in the academ y , the m anifest influence of the
v ogue of Structuralism on these Bible scholars has not been a v ery fruitful one;
and one too often encounters in their work rather sim ple superim positions of one
or another m odern literary theory on ancient texts that in fact hav e their own
dy nam ics, their own distinctiv e conv entions and characteristic techniques. One
som etim es gets the im pression that scholars of this sort are try ing m anfully ,
perhaps alm ost too conscientiously , to m ake a start, but that literary analy sis,
after all those sem inars in graduate school on Sum erian law and Ugaritic cult
term s, rem ains for them a foreign language laboriously learned, whose accents
and intonations they hav e not y et gotten right.

Three recent first books by Bible scholars m ay be partly exem pted, though
only partly , from these strictures. Michael Fishbane’s Text and Texture5 prov ides
a series of sensitiv e close readings of a v ariety of biblical texts, but it does not
propose any general critical m ethod; it is often a little ponderous in its
form ulations and in its application of Structuralist or ethnopoetic notions; and it

30
seem s finally less concerned with poetics than with hom iletics. The Dutch
scholar J. P. Fokkelm an, in Narrative Art in Genesis, 6 a book strongly influenced
by the Swiss-Germ an Werkinterpretation school of literary criticism (an
approxim ate analogue to the Am erican New Criticism ), giv es us som e brilliant
analy ses of form al patterns in the Hebrew prose and of how they function
them atically ; but he also shows a certain tendency to interpretiv e ov erkill in
his explications, at tim es discov ering patterns where they m ay not be, and
assum ing with a noticeable degree of strain that form m ust alway s be
significantly expressiv e. Finally , the Israeli Bible scholar Shim on Bar-Efrat,
writing in Hebrew, has attem pted in The Art of the Biblical Story the first serious
book-length introduction in any language to the distinctiv e poetics of biblical
narrativ e. 7 He m akes a v aluable beginning, offering som e splendid readings of
indiv idual scenes and nicely observ ing certain general principles of biblical
narrativ e; but whether out of an uncertain sense of audience or because of his
own relation to the subject, rather too m uch space is dev oted to belaboring the
obv ious, especially in regard to basic m atters of how literary narrativ es work.
These recent publications, then, indicate that things m ay be in the early stages
of changing within the field of biblical studies proper, but also that the discipline
still has a considerable way to go.

The one obv ious reason for the absence of scholarly literary interest in the
Bible for so long is that, in contrast to Greek and Latin literature, the Bible was
regarded for so m any centuries by both Christians and Jews as the prim ary ,
unitary source of div inely rev ealed truth. This belief still m akes itself
profoundly felt, in both reactions against and perpetuations of it. The first
sev eral wav es of m odern biblical criticism , beginning in the nineteenth
century , were from one point of v iew a sustained assault on the supposedly
unitary character of the Bible, an attem pt to break it up into its constituent
sources, then to link those pieces to their original life contexts, thus rescuing for
history a body of texts that religious tradition had enshrined in tim elessness,
bey ond precise historical considerations. The m om entum of this enterprise
continues unabated, so that it still seem s to m ost scholars in the field m uch
m ore urgent to inquire, say , how a particular psalm m ight hav e been used in a
hy pothetically reconstructed tem ple ritual than how it works as an achiev ed
piece of poetry . At the sam e tim e, the potent residue of the older belief in the

31
Bible as the rev elation of ultim ate truth is perceptible in the tendency of
scholars to ask questions about the biblical v iew of m an, the biblical notion of
the soul, the biblical v ision of eschatology , while for the m ost part neglecting
phenom ena like character, m otiv e, and narrativ e design as unbefitting for the
study of an essentially religious docum ent. The fact that such a substantial
proportion of academ ic biblical studies goes on in theological sem inaries, both
here and in Europe, institutionally reinforces this double-edged pursuit of
analy zed fragm ents and larger v iews, with scarcely any literary m iddle
ground.

The rare exceptions to this general rule hav e often occurred, as in the case of
the Hrushov ski article, when a literary scholar with a grasp of biblical Hebrew
has addressed him self to biblical m aterials, approaching them from som e larger
literary perspectiv e. The one celebrated instance is the im m ensely suggestiv e
first chapter of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, 8 in which the antithetical m odes of
representing reality in Genesis and the Odyssey are com pared at length.
Auerbach m ust be credited with showing m ore clearly than any one before him
how the cry ptic conciseness of biblical narrativ e is a reflection of profound art,
not prim itiv eness, but his insight is the result of penetrating critical intuition
unsupported by any real m ethod for dealing with the specific characteristics of
biblical literary form s. His key notion of biblical narrativ e as a purposefully
spare text “fraught with background” is at once resoundingly right and too
sweepingly general. Distinctions hav e to be m ade for narrativ es by different
authors, of different periods, and written to fulfill different generic or them atic
requirem ents. An arresting starkness of foreground, an enorm ous freight of
background, are beautifully illustrated in the story of the binding of Isaac that
Auerbach analy zes, but those term s would hav e to be seriously m odified for the
psy chologically com plex cy cle of stories about Dav id, for the deliberately
schem atic folktale fram e of the Book of Job, or for a late (in part, satirical)
narrativ e like Esther, where in fact there is a high degree of specification in the
foreground of artifacts, costum e, court custom s, and the like.

Mov ing bey ond Auerbach toward the definition of a specific poetics of biblical
narrativ e are four im portant articles by Menakhem Perry and Meir Sternberg,
two y oung Israeli literary scholars, which appeared in the Hebrew quarterly

32
Ha-Sifrut. The first of these, “The King through Ironic Ey es,” 9 is a brilliant
v erse-by -v erse analy sis of the story of Dav id and Bathsheba dem onstrating—to
m y m ind, conclusiv ely —that an elaborate sy stem of gaps between what is told
and what m ust be inferred has been artfully contriv ed to leav e us with at least
t w o conflicting, m utually com plicating interpretations of the m otiv es and
states of knowledge of the principal characters. This reading, which insists on a
structural analogy between the story in 2 Sam uel and Henry Jam es’s
deliberate am biguity in The Turn of the Screw, stirred up a hornet’s nest of
protest after its initial publication. The m ost recurrent them e of the article’s
critics was that the biblical story was, after all, religious, m oral, and didactic in
intention, and so would hardly indulge in all this fancy footwork of m ultiple
ironies that we m oderns so lov e. (Im plicit in such a contention is a rather
lim iting notion of what a “religious” narrativ e is, or of how the insight of art
m ight relate to a religious v ision. This is a central question to which we shall
return.) Perry and Sternberg responded with a rejoinder of ov er 50,000 words
in which they conv incingly argued that they had not im posed m odern literary
criteria on the Bible but rather had m eticulously observ ed what were the
general norm s of biblical narrativ e itself and in what significant way s the story
in question div erged from those norm s. 1 0

More recently , Sternberg, writing alone, has prov ided a shrewdly perceptiv e
analy sis of the story of the rape of Dinah, concluding his discussion with a
general description of the spectrum of rhetorical dev ices, from explicit to
(predom inantly ) oblique, through which biblical narrativ e conv ey s m oral
judgm ents of its characters. 1 1 Finally , Sternberg, in still another lengthy
article, has catalogued with apt illustrativ e explications the repertory of
repetitiv e dev ices used by the biblical writers. 1 2 Any one interested in the
narrativ e art of the Bible has m uch to learn from all four of these articles. The
rigor and subtlety of Perry and Sternberg’s readings in them selv es lend support
to the program m atic assertion they m ake at the end of their response to their
critics: “The perspectiv e of literary studies is the only relev ant one to the
consideration of the Bible as literature. Any other discipline, real or im agined,
runs the danger of inv enting groundless hy potheses and losing touch with the
literary power of the actual biblical story .”

33
 Hav ing been taught so m uch by Perry and Sternberg, I would like to express
two sm all reserv ations about their approach, one perhaps just a quibble ov er
form ulation, the other an issue of m ethod. The notion of “the Bible as
literature,” though particularly contam inated in English by its use as a rubric
for superficial college courses and for dubious publishers’ packages, is needlessly
concessiv e and condescending toward literature in any language. (It would at
the v ery least be gratuitous to speak of “Dante as literature,” giv en the assured
literary status of Dante’s great poem , though the Divine Comedy is m ore
explicitly theological, or “religious,” than m ost of the Bible.) Perry and
Sternberg, answering their critics, characterize the biblical story as “a junction
of purposes which generate relations of com plem entarity and tension.” “One
such purpose,” they go on to say , “is the ‘aesthetic’ aim ” to which at least one of
their critics m akes a gesture of concession. Rather than v iewing the literary
character of the Bible as one of sev eral “purposes” or “tendencies” (megamot in
the original), I would prefer to insist on a com plete interfusion of literary art
with theological, m oral, or historiosophical v ision, the fullest perception of the
latter dependent on the fullest grasp of the form er. This point has been aptly
m ade by Joel Rosenberg, a y oung Am erican scholar and poet, in an adm irably
intelligent general rationale for a literary perspectiv e on the Bible published in
Response: “The Bible’s v alue as a religious docum ent is intim ately and
inseparably related to its v alue as literature. This proposition requires that we
dev elop a different understanding of what literature is, one that m ight—and
should—giv e us som e trouble.” 1 3 One could add that the proposition also
requires, conv ersely , that we dev elop a som ewhat m ore troublesom e
understanding of what a religious docum ent m ight be.

One leading em phasis of the Rosenberg essay points to what I think is a

m ethodological deficiency in Perry and Sternberg’s otherwise apt analy ses.
They tend to write about biblical narrativ e as though it were a unitary
production just like a m odern nov el that is entirely conceiv ed and executed by a
single independent writer who superv ises his original work from first draft to
page proofs. They turn their backs, in other words, on what historical
scholarship has taught us about the specific conditions of dev elopm ent of the
biblical text and about its frequently com posite nature. Rosenberg, by contrast,
is keenly aware of historical scholarship, and he sees its findings, in a way the

34
historical scholars them selv es do not, as aspects of the distinctiv e artistic
m edium of the biblical authors. Here is his com m ent on the Pentateuch, the set
of biblical narrativ es m ost thoroughly analy zed into antecedent sources by the
scholars: “It m ay actually im prov e our understanding of the Torah to
rem em ber that it is quoting docum ents, that there is, in other words, a
purposeful docum entary montage that m ust be perceiv ed as a unity , regardless
of the num ber and ty pes of sm aller units that form the building blocks of its
com position. Here, the weight of literary interest falls upon the activ ity of the
final redactor, whose artistry requires far m ore careful attention than it has
hitherto been accorded.” One should probably adopt this conclusion with som e
caution because it would seem to suggest that the redactor is by definition a
consum m ate literary artist. This m ay som etim es be the case, but he often does
seem rather an assem bler of sources, as scholarship has assum ed.

There is no point, to be sure, in pretending that all the contradictions am ong

different sources in the biblical texts can be happily harm onized by the
perception of som e artful design. It seem s reasonable enough, howev er, to
suggest that we m ay still not fully understand what would hav e been perceiv ed
as a real contradiction by an intelligent Hebrew writer of the early Iron Age, so
that apparently conflicting v ersions of the sam e ev ent set side by side, far from
troubling their original audience, m ay hav e som etim es been perfectly justified
in a kind of logic we no longer apprehend. (We shall be considering this
phenom enon m ore closely later, in chapter 7 .) In any case, the v alidity of
Rosenberg’s general claim can, I think, be dem onstrated by a careful reading of
a good m any biblical narrativ es. Genesis 3 8, which we hav e exam ined in detail,
is generally ascribed by scholars to the so-called Yahwistic or J Docum ent after a
m ingling of J and E (the Elohistic Docum ent) in the prev ious episode. But ev en
if the text is com posite in origin, I think we hav e seen am ple ev idence of how
brilliantly it has been wov en into a com plex artistic whole.

Accustom ed as we are to reading narrativ es in which there is a m uch denser

specification of fictional data, we hav e to learn, as Perry and Sternberg hav e
shown, to attend m ore finely to the com plex, tersely expressiv e details of the
biblical text. (Traditional exegesis in its own way did this, but with far-reaching
assum ptions about the text as literal rev elation that m ost of us no longer
accept.) Biblical narrativ e is laconic but by no m eans in a uniform or

35
m echanical fashion. Why , then, does the narrator ascribe m otiv es to or
designate states of feeling in his characters in som e instances, while elsewhere
he chooses to rem ain silent on these points? Why are som e actions m inim ally
indicated, others elaborated through sy nony m and detail? What accounts for
the drastic shifts in the tim e-scale of narrated ev ents? Why is actual dialogue
introduced at certain junctures, and on what principle of selectiv ity are specific
words assigned to characters? In a text so sparing in epithets and relational
designations, why are particular identifications of characters noted by the
narrator at specific points in the story ? Repetition is a fam iliar feature of the
Bible, but it is in no way an autom atic dev ice: when does literal repetition
occur, and what are the significant v ariations in repeated v erbal form ulas?

Finally , to understand a narrativ e art so bare of em bellishm ent and explicit

com m entary , one m ust be constantly aware of two features: the repeated use of
narrativ e analogy , through which one part of the text prov ides oblique
com m entary on another; and the richly expressiv e function of sy ntax, which
often bears the kind of weight of m eaning that, say , im agery does in a nov el by
Virginia Woolf or analy sis in a nov el by George Eliot. Attention to such features
leads not to a m ore “im aginativ e” reading of biblical narrativ e but to a m ore
precise one; and since all these features are linked to discernible details in the
Hebrew text, the literary approach is actually a good deal less conjectural than
the historical scholarship that asks of a v erse whether it contains possible
Akkadian loanwords, whether it reflects Sum erian kinship practices, whether it
m ay hav e been corrupted by scribal error.

In any case, the fact that the text is ancient and that its characteristic
narrativ e procedures m ay differ in m any respects from those of m odern texts
should not lead us to any condescending preconception that the text is therefore
bound to be crude or sim ple. Tzv etan Todorov has shrewdly argued that the
whole notion of “prim itiv e narrativ e” is a kind of m ental m irage engendered by
m odern parochialism , for the m ore closely y ou look at a particular ancient
narrativ e, the m ore y ou are com pelled to recognize the com plexity and subtlety
with which it is form ally organized and with which it renders its subjects, and
the m ore y ou see how it is conscious of its necessary status as artful discourse. It
is only by im posing a naiv e and unexam ined aesthetic of their own, Todorov
proposes, that m odern scholars are able to declare so confidently that certain

36
parts of the ancient text could not belong with others: the supposedly prim itiv e
narrativ e is subjected by scholars to tacit laws like the law of sty listic unity , of
noncontradiction, of nondigression, of nonrepetition, and by these dim but
purportedly univ ersal lights is found to be com posite, deficient, or incoherent.
(If just these four laws were applied respectiv ely to Ulysses, The Sound and the
Fury, Tristram Shandy, and Jealousy, each of those nov els would hav e to be
relegated to the dustbin of shoddily “redacted” literary scraps.) Attention to the
ancient narrativ e’s consciousness of its own operations, Todorov proposes, will
rev eal how irrelev ant these com placently assum ed criteria generally are. 1 4
Todorov bases his argum ent on exam ples from the Odyssey, but his questioning
the existence of prim itiv e narrativ e could be equally well supported by a
consideration of the Hebrew Bible.

What we need to understand better is that the religious v ision of the Bible is
giv en depth and subtlety precisely by being conv ey ed through the m ost
sophisticated resources of prose fiction. In the exam ple we hav e considered,
Judah and Jacob-Israel are not sim ple epony m ous counters in an etiological tale
(this is the flattening effect of som e historical scholarship) but are indiv idual
characters surrounded by m ultiple ironies, artfully etched in their
im perfections as well as in their strengths. A histrionic Jacob blinded by
excessiv e lov e and perhaps lov ing the excess; an im petuous, som etim es callous
Judah, who is y et capable of candor when confronted with hard facts; a fiercely
resolv ed, steel-nerv ed Tam ar—all such subtly indicated achiev em ents of
fictional characterization suggest the endlessly com plicated ram ifications and
contradictions of a principle of div ine election interv ening in the accepted
orders of society and nature. The biblical tale, through the m ost rigorous
econom y of m eans, leads us again and again to ponder com plexities of m otiv e
and am biguities of character because these are essential aspects of its v ision of
m an, created by God, enjoy ing or suffering all the consequences of hum an
freedom . Different considerations would naturally hav e to be explored for
biblical poetry . Alm ost the whole range of biblical narrativ e, howev er,
em bodies the basic perception that m an m ust liv e before God, in the
transform ing m edium of tim e, incessantly and perplexingly in relation with
others; and a literary perspectiv e on the operations of narrativ e m ay help us
m ore than any other to see how this perception was translated into stories that

37
hav e had such a powerful, enduring hold on the im agination.

38
 2

Sacred History and the Beginnings of Prose Fiction

THE HEBREW BIBLE is generally perceiv ed, with considerable justice, as sacred
history , and both term s of that status hav e often been inv oked to argue against
the applicability to the Bible of the m ethods of literary analy sis. If the text is
sacred, if it was grasped by the audiences for whom it was m ade as a rev elation
of God’s will, perhaps of His literal words, how can one hope to explain it through
categories dev eloped for the understanding of such a fundam entally secular,
indiv idual, and aesthetic enterprise as that of later Western literature? And if
the text is history , seriously purporting to render an account of the origins of
things and of Israelite national experience as they actually happened, is it not
presum ptuous to analy ze these narrativ es in the term s we custom arily apply to
prose fiction, a m ode of writing we understand to be the arbitrary inv ention of
the writer, whatev er the correspondences such a work m ay exhibit with
quotidian or ev en historical reality ? In a nov el by Flaubert or Tolstoy or Henry
Jam es, where we are aware of the conscious fashioning of a fictional artifice,
som etim es with abundant docum entation from the writer’s notebooks and
letters, it is altogether appropriate to discuss techniques of characterization,
shifts of dialogue, the ordering of larger com positional elem ents; but are we not
coercing the Bible into being “literature” by attem pting to transfer such
categories to a set of texts that are theologically m otiv ated, historically
oriented, and perhaps to som e extent collectiv ely com posed?

At least som e of these objections will be undercut by recognizing, as sev eral

recent analy sts hav e argued, that history is far m ore intim ately related to
fiction than we hav e been accustom ed to assum e. It is im portant to see the
com m on ground shared by the two m odes of narrativ e, ontologically and
form ally , but it also strikes m e as m isguided to insist that writing history is
finally identical with writing fiction. The two kinds of literary activ ity
obv iously share a whole range of narrativ e strategies, and the historian m ay
seem to resem ble the writer of fiction in em ploy ing, as in som e way s he m ust, a
series of im aginativ e constructs. Yet there rem ains a qualitativ e difference, for
exam ple, between G. M. Trev ely an’s portrait of Robert Walpole, which, though

39
an interpretation and so in som e degree an im aginativ e projection, is closely
bound to the known historical facts, and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild, a character
that alludes satirically to Walpole but clearly has its own dy nam ics as an
independent fictional inv ention.

The case of the Bible’s sacred history , howev er, is rather different from that of
m odern historiography . There is, to begin with, a whole spectrum of relations to
history in the sundry biblical narrativ es, as I shall try to indicate later, but
none of these inv olv es the sense of being bound to docum entable facts that
characterizes history in its m odern acceptation. It is often asserted that the
biblical writer is bound instead to the fixed m aterials, whether oral or written,
that tradition has transm itted to him . This is a claim difficult to v erify or refute
because we hav e no real way of knowing what were the precise contents of
Hebrew tradition around the beginning of the first m illennium BCE. A close
inspection, howev er, of the texts that hav e been passed down to us m ay lead to a
certain degree of skepticism about this scholarly notion of the ty rannical
authority of ancient tradition, m ay lead us, in fact, to conclude that the writers
exercised a good deal of artistic freedom in articulating the traditions at their
disposal.

As odd as it m ay sound at first, I would contend that prose fiction is the best
general rubric for describing biblical narrativ e. Or, to be m ore precise, and to
borrow a key term from Herbert Schneidau’s speculativ e, som etim es
questionable, y et in som e way s suggestiv e study , Sacred Discontent, we can
speak of the Bible as historicized prose fiction. To cite the clearest exam ple, the
Patriarchal narrativ es m ay be com posite fictions based on national traditions,
but in the writers’ refusal to m ake them conform to the sy m m etries of
expectation, in their contradictions and anom alies, they suggest the
unfathom ability of life in history under an inscrutable God. “What we are
witnessing in Genesis, and in parts of the Dav id story ,” Schneidau observ es, “is
the birth of a new kind of historicized fiction, m ov ing steadily away from the
m otiv es and habits of the world of legend and m y th.” 1 This generalization can, I
think, be extended bey ond Genesis and the Dav id story to m uch of biblical
narrativ e, ev en where, as in parts of the Book of Kings, an abundance of
legendary m aterial is ev ident. Because the central thesis of Schneidau’s book is

40
the rebellion of biblical literature against the pagan worldv iew, which is locked
into an eternal cy clical m ov em ent, his stress falls on the historicizing, though
the fiction deserv es equal attention. Indeed, as we shall hav e occasion to see, it
m ay often be m ore precise to describe what happens in biblical narrativ e as
fictionalized history , especially when we m ov e into the period of the Judges and
Kings. But before we pursue the them e of either history or fiction, we should
pause ov er the prose com ponent of prose fiction, which is far m ore than a m atter
of conv enience in classification for the librarian.

It is peculiar, and culturally significant, that am ong ancient peoples only

Israel should hav e chosen to cast its sacred national traditions in prose. Am ong
m any hazily conceiv ed literary term s applied to the Bible, scholars hav e often
spoken of it as the “national epic” of ancient Israel, or, m ore specifically , they
hav e conjectured about an oral Creation epic and Exodus epic upon which the
authors of the Pentateuch drew. But, as the Israeli Bible scholar Shem ary ahu
Talm on has argued, what by all appearance we hav e in the Bible is, quite to the
con t r a r y , a deliberate av oidance of epic, and the prose form of Hebrew
narrativ e is the chief ev idence for this av oidance:
The ancient Hebrew writers purposefully nurtured and dev eloped prose
narration to take the place of the epic genre which by its content was
intim ately bound up with the world of paganism , and appears to hav e
had a special standing in the poly theistic cults. The recitation of the epics
was tantam ount to an enactm ent of cosm ic ev ents in the m anner of
sy m pathetic m agic. In the process of total rejection of the poly theistic
religions and their ritual expressions in the cult, epic songs and also the
epic genre were purged from the repertoire of the Hebrew authors. 2

This useful proposal is no doubt too categorical in its suggestion that

m y thology was “purged” from the Hebrew texts, for in fact they exhibit m any
v estiges of m y thological m aterials, som etim es ev en startlingly salient ones. The
prev ailing em phasis of the narrativ es, in any case, does m ov e away from
m y thology . What is crucial for the literary understanding of the Bible is that
this im pulse to shape a different kind of narrativ e in prose had powerfully
constructiv e consequences in the new m edium that the ancient Hebrew writers

41
fashioned for their m onotheistic purposes. Prose narration, affording writers a
rem arkable range and flexibility in the m eans of presentation, could be utilized
to liberate fictional personages from the fixed choreography of tim eless ev ents
and thus could transform story telling from ritual rehearsal to the delineation of
the way ward paths of hum an freedom , the quirks and contradictions of m en
and wom en seen as m oral agents and com plex centers of m otiv e and feeling.

The underly ing im pulse of this whole portentous transition in literary m odes
is effectiv ely caught, though with certain im precisions I shall try to correct, by
Herbert Schneidau in an anthropological generalization that nicely
com plem ents Talm on’s historical proposal. Schneidau speaks of a “world of
linked analogies and correspondences” m anifested in the prim itiv e im agination
and in the div initory m ode of expression. “A cosm ology of hierarchical
continuities, as in m y thological thought, exhibits strong m etaphorical
tendencies. The enm eshing and interlocking of structures are coherently
expressed in poetic ev ocation of transferable, substitutable qualities and nam es.
In this world, m ov em ent tends to round itself into totalization, im pelled by the
principle of closure.” In contrast to this m y thological world dom inated by
m etaphor, Schneidau sees m etony m y —the linking of things through m ere
contact rather than through likeness, as in m etaphor—with its point-to-point
m ov em ent suggesting the prosaic m odes of narrativ e and history , as the key to
the literature of the Bible. Because it is a literature that breaks away from the
old cosm ic hierarchies, the Bible switches from a reliance on m etaphor to a
reliance on m etony m y . Schneidau attem pts to sum m arize this whole contrast
in an aphorism : “Where m y th is hy potactic m etaphors, the Bible is paratactic
m etony m ies.” 3 That is, where m y th inv olv es a set of equiv alencies arranged in
som e sy stem of subordination, the Bible offers a series of contiguous term s
arranged in sequence without a clear definition of the link between one term
and the next. 4

This general com parison prov ides an im portant insight into the innov ativ e
nature of the Bible’s literary enterprise, but som e of the concepts inv oked are
m isleading. There are, to begin with, a good m any ancient Near Eastern
narrativ es that are sophisticated, fundam entally secular literary works,
though for Schneidau as for Talm on the m y thological poem s would appear to be

42
the paradigm of pagan literature from which the Bible swerv es. The
paradigm atic function for which he enlists this particular kind of pre-Israelite
narrativ e m ay well justify the stress on the Hebrew literary rejection of m y th,
but other term s that Schneidau adopts rem ain problem atic. Hy potaxis and
parataxis m ay be logically coordinated with m etaphor and m etony m y
respectiv ely , but in actual sy ntactic patterns, the Near Eastern m y thological
v erse narrativ es would appear to be m ainly paratactic, while biblical narrativ e
prose exhibits a good deal of v ariation from parataxis to hy potaxis, according to
the aim s of the writer and the requirem ents of the particular narrativ e
juncture. Rom an Jakobson’s schem atic distinction, m oreov er, between
m etaphor and m etony m y fits the case under discussion only in a loose
figurativ e sense because actual m etaphor (rather than inferable m etaphy sical
“correspondences”) is by no m eans predom inant in the extant ancient Near
Eastern m y thological epics. Schneidau’s m ost v aluable perception, in any case,
is not dependent on these term s, for his m ain point is the v igorous m ov em ent of
biblical writing away from the stable closure of the m y thological world and
toward the indeterm inacy , the shifting causal concatenations, the am biguities
of a fiction m ade to resem ble the uncertainties of life in history . And for that
m ov em ent, I would add, the suppleness of prose as a narrativ e m edium was
indispensable, at least in the Near Eastern setting.

One final qualification should be added to this instructiv e if som ewhat

ov erdrawn opposition between m y th and “historicized fiction.” Different
cultures often take different routes to what is substantially the sam e end; and if
one m ov es bey ond the ancient Fertile Crescent to the Greek sphere, one can find
in sophisticated m y thographic v ersenarrativ es, such as Hesiod and the
m y thological episodes in Hom er, a good deal in the treatm ent of m otiv e,
character, and causation that is analogous to the biblical sense of
indeterm inacy and am biguity . The Hebrew writers, howev er, m ade a special
v irtue in this regard out of the newly fashioned prose m edium in which they
worked, and this deserv es closer attention than it has generally receiv ed.

As an initial illustration of how the m odalities of prose fiction operate in

biblical narrativ e, I should like to consider a passage from the so-called prim ev al
history , the creation of Ev e (Genesis 2 ). It m ay serv e as a useful test case
because with its account of origins, its generalized hum an figures, its

43
anthropom orphic deity , and the ancient Near Eastern background of the
v ersion of creation in which it occurs, it has been v ariously classified by m odern
com m entators as m y th, legend, and folklore, and would seem quite unlike what
we usually think of as artfully conceiv ed fiction. In the im m ediately preceding
v erse, one recalls, God had warned the first hum an under the penalty of death
not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Man’s response to this injunction is not
recorded. Instead, the narrativ e m ov es on—perhaps m aking that hiatus itself a
proleptic intim ation of the link between m an’s future m ate and the seizing of
forbidden knowledge—to an expression in direct speech of God’s concern for the
solitary condition of His creature:
1 8. And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the hum an to be alone. I
shall m ake him a sustainer beside him .” 1 9 . And the LORD God fashioned
from the soil each beast of the field and each fowl of the heav ens and
brought each to the hum an to see what he would call it; and whatev er the
hum an called a liv ing creature, that would be its nam e. 2 0. And the
hum an called nam es to all the cattle and to the fowl of the heav ens and to
all the beasts of the field, but for the hum an no sustainer beside him was
found. 2 1 . And the LORD God cast a deep slum ber on the hum an and he
slept, and He took one of his ribs and closed ov er the flesh at that place.
2 2 . And the LORD God built the rib he had taken from the hum an into a
wom an and He brought her to the hum an. 2 3 . And the hum an said:
This one at last, bone of m y bones and flesh of m y flesh.

This one shall be called Wom an for from m an was this one taken.

2 4 . Thus does a m an leav e his father and his m other and cling to his
wom an, and they becom e one flesh. 2 5. And the two of them were naked,
the hum an and his wom an, and they were not asham ed.

The usual taxonom ic approach to the Bible would explain the whole passage as
a piece of ancient folklore, an etiological tale intended to account for the
existence of wom an, for her subordinate status, and for the attraction she
perennially exerts ov er m an. The inset of form al v erse (a com m on conv ention

44
in biblical narrativ e for direct speech that has som e significantly sum m arizing
or cerem onial function) in fact looks archaic and could conceiv ably hav e been a
fam iliar etiological tag in circulation for centuries before the m aking of this
passage. Folkloric traditions m ay v ery well be behind the text, but I don’t think
that in them selv es they prov ide a v ery satisfactory sense of the artful com plex
that the writer has shaped out of his m aterials. Our first ancestors of course
cannot be allowed m uch indiv iduality and so they are not exactly “fictional
characters” in the way that later figures in Genesis like Jacob and Joseph and
Tam ar will be. Nev ertheless, the writer, through a subtle m anipulation of
language and narrativ e exposition, m anages to endow Adam and Ev e with a
degree of m orally problem atic interiority one would hardly expect in a
prim itiv e folktale explaining origins. Before we look at som e of the details, we
m ight contrast the general im pression of this passage with the account of the
creation of m ankind (there is no separate creation of wom an) in the Enuma
Elish, the Baby lonian creation epic. The god Marduk, after trium phing ov er the
prim ev al m other Tiam at, announces:
I shall com pact blood, I shall cause bones to be,

I shall m ake stand a hum an being, let “Man” be its nam e.

I shall create hum ankind.

They shall bear the gods’ burden that those m ay rest. 5

Marduk shares with the God of Israel the anthropom orphic m étier of a
sculptor in the m edium of flesh and bone, but m an in the Akkadian v erse
narrativ e is m erely an object acted upon, his sole reason for existence to perform
the labors of the gods and supply their m aterial wants. Hum anity is conceiv ed
here exclusiv ely in term s of subordinate function—m an is m ade in order to
serv e the gods—and so the highly differentiated realm s of history and m oral
action are not intim ated in the account of m an’s creation. This is a signal
instance of what Schneidau m eans by hum anity ’s being locked into a set of fixed
hierarchies in the m y thological worldv iew. Man so conceiv ed cannot be the
protagonist of prose fiction: the appropriate narrativ e m edium is that of
m y thological epic, in which the stately progression of parallelistic v erse—in

45
fact, predom inantly paratactic and unm etaphorical here—em phatically
rehearses m an’s eternal place in an absolute cosm ic schem e. (Of course, few
m y thological epics will correspond so neatly to these notions of fixity and
closure. But the m odel of the Enuma Elish is decisiv e for our text because it
reflects the prev alent norm of sacred narrativ e with which the Hebrew writer
was breaking.) If we now return to Genesis 2 , we can clearly see how the
m onotheistic writer works not only with v ery different theological assum ptions
but also with a radically different sense of literary form .

In contrast to the hortatory diction of Marduk and his fellow m em bers of the
Baby lonian pantheon, God expresses His perception of m an’s condition and His
own intention with a stark directness: “It is not good for m an to be alone. I shall
m ake him a sustainer beside him .” (His utterance, nev ertheless, is close enough
to a scannable poetic line of com plem entary parallelism to giv e it a hint of
form al elev ation.) Then there occurs a peculiar interruption. We hav e been
conditioned by the prev ious v ersion of cosm ogony to expect an im m ediate act of
creation to flow from the div ine utterance that is introduced by the form ula,
“And God said.” Here, howev er, we m ust wait two v erses for the prom ised
creation of a helpm ate while we follow the process of the first hum an’s giv ing
nam es to all liv ing creatures. These v erses (Gen. 2 :1 9 –2 0) are m arked, as a
form al seal of their integration in the story , by an env elope structure, being
im m ediately preceded by the them atically crucial phrase ʿezer kenegdo
(literally , “an aid opposite him ”), and concluding with that sam e phrase. A
concise com m ent on these two v erses in the classical Midrash nicely reflects
their strategic utility : “He m ade them pass by in pairs. He said, ‘Ev ery thing
has its partner but I hav e no partner’” (Bereishit Rabba 1 7 :5). What is especially
interesting about this m iniature dram atization in the Midrash is where it
m ight hav e com e from in the text, for the literary insights of the m idrashic
exegetes generally deriv e from their sensitiv e response to v erbal clues—in the
recurrence of a key word, the nuanced choice of a particular lexical item ,
significant sound-play , and so forth. Here, howev er, it seem s that the Midrash is
responding not to any particular word in the passage but to an aspect of the text
continuum that today we would call a strategy of narrativ e exposition. Ev e has
been prom ised. She is then withheld for two carefully fram ed v erses while God
allows the hum an creature to perform his unique function as the bestower of

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nam es on things. There is im plicit irony in this order of narrated ev ents. Man is
superior to all other liv ing creatures because only he can inv ent language, only
he has the lev el of consciousness that m akes him capable of linguistic ordering.
But this v ery consciousness m akes him aware of his solitude in contrast to the
rest of the zoological kingdom . (It is, perhaps, a solitude m itigated but not
entirely rem ov ed by the creation of wom an, for that creation takes place
through the infliction of a kind of wound on him , and afterward, in historical
tim e, he will pursue her, strain to becom e “one flesh” with her, as though to
regain a lost part of him self.) The contrast between m ateless m an calling nam es
to a m ute world of m ated creatures is brought out by a finesse of sy ntax not
reproducible in translation. Verse 2 0 actually tells us that m an gav e nam es “to
all cattle ... to the fowl ... to all the beasts ... to the hum an,” m om entarily
seem ing to place the first hum an in an anaphoric prepositional series with all
liv ing creatures. This incipient construction is then rev ersed by the v erb “did
not find,” which sets the hum an in opposition to all that has preceded. One could
plausibly argue, then, that the Midrash was not m erely indulging in a flight of
fancy when it im agined the first hum an m aking that confession of loneliness as
he nam ed the creatures passing before him .

When God at last begins to carry out His prom ise at the beginning of v erse 2 1 ,
m an, with the interv ention of div ine anesthetic, is reduced from a conscious
agent to an inert object acted upon, for the m om ent m uch like m an in the
Enuma Elish. The them atic difference, of course, is that this im age of m an as
passiv e m atter is bracketed on both sides by his perform ances as m aster of
language. As soon as the awakened hum an discov ers wom an, he proceeds—as
natural births elsewhere in the Bible are regularly followed by the cerem ony of
nam ing—to nam e her, adopting the form al em phasis of a poem . The poem
(v erse 2 3 ), whether or not it was the writer’s original com position, fits
beautifully into the them atic argum ent of his narrativ e. Written in a double
chiastic structure, it refers to the wom an just being nam ed by an indicativ e,
zot, “this [fem inine] one,” which is the first and last word of the poem in the
Hebrew as well as the linchpin in the m iddle. Man nam es the anim als ov er
whom he has dom inion; he nam es wom an, ov er whom he ostensibly will hav e
dom inion. But in the poem , m an and his bone and flesh are sy ntactically
surrounded by this new fem ale presence, a rhetorical configuration that m akes

47
perfect sense in the light of their subsequent history together.

The explanatory v erse 2 4 , which begins with “therefore” (ʿal-ken), a fixed

form ula for introducing etiological assertions, m ight well hav e been part of a
prov erbial statem ent adopted v erbatim by the writer, but ev en if this
hy pothesis is granted, what is rem arkable is the artistry with which he weav es
the etiological utterance into the texture of his own prose. The splendid im age of
desire fulfilled and, by extension, of the conjugal state—“they becom e one
flesh”—is both a v iv id glim pse of the act itself and a bold hy perbole. The writer, I
would suggest, is as aware of the hy perbolic aspect of the im age as later Plato
will be when in The Symposium he attributes to Aristophanes the notion that
lov ers are the bifurcated halv es of a prim al self who are try ing to recapture that
im possible prim al unity . For as soon as the idea of one flesh has been put forth
(and “one” is the last word of the v erse in the Hebrew), the narration proceeds
as follows: “And the two of them were naked, the hum an and his wom an, and
they were not asham ed.” After being inv oked as the tim eless m odel of conjugal
oneness, they are im m ediately seen as two, a condition stressed by the
deliberately awkward and uncharacteristic doubling back of the sy ntax in the
appositional phrase, “the m an and his wom an”—a sm all illustration of how the
flexibility of the prose m edium enables the writer to introduce psy chological
distinctions, dialectical rev ersals of them atic direction, that would not hav e
been feasible in the v erse narrativ es of the ancient Near East. So the first m an
and wom an are now two, v ulnerable in their twoness to the tem ptation of the
serpent, who will be able to seduce first one, and through the one, the other:
naked (ʿarumim), unasham ed, they are about to be exposed to the m ost cunning
(ʿarum) of the beasts of the field, who will giv e them cause to feel sham e.

From this distance in tim e, it is im possible to determ ine how m uch of this
whole tale was sanctified, ev en v erbally fixed, tradition; how m uch was popular
lore perhaps av ailable in different v ersions; how m uch the original inv ention of
the J writer. What a close reading of the text does suggest, howev er, is that the
writer could m anipulate his inherited m aterials with sufficient freedom and
sufficient firm ness of authorial purpose to define m otiv es, relations, and
unfolding them es, ev en in a prim ev al history , with the kind of subtle cogency
we associate with the conscious artistry of the narrativ e m ode designated prose
fiction. (Here and in what follows, I assum e when I say “conscious artistry ” that

48
there is alway s a com plex interplay between deliberate intention and
unconscious intuition in the act of artistic creation, but the biblical writer is no
different from his m odern counterpart in this regard.) Throughout these early
chapters of Genesis, the first m an and wom an are not the fixed figures of legend
or m y th but are m ade to assum e contours conceiv ed in the writer’s
particularizing im agination through the brief but rev ealing dialogue he
inv ents for them and through the v ary ing strategies of presentation he adopts
in reporting their im m em orial acts.

Let m e hasten to say that in giv ing such weight to fictionality , I do not m ean
to discount the historical im pulse that inform s the Hebrew Bible. The God of
Israel, as so often has been observ ed, is abov e all the God of history : the working
out of His purposes in history is a process that com pels the attention of the
Hebrew im agination, which is thus led to the m ost v ital interest in the concrete
and differential character of historical ev ents. The point is that fiction was the
principal m eans that the biblical authors had at their disposal for realizing
history . 6 Under scrutiny , biblical narrativ e generally prov es to be either
fiction lay ing claim to a place in the chain of causation and the realm of m oral
consequentiality that belong to history , as in the prim ev al history , the tales of
the Patriarchs and m uch of the Exodus story , and the account of the early
Conquest, or history giv en the im aginativ e definition of fiction, as in m ost of the
narrativ es from the period of the Judges onward. This schem a, of course, is
necessarily neater than the persistently untidy reality of the v ariegated
biblical narrativ es. What the Bible offers us is an unev en continuum and a
constant interweav ing of factual historical detail (especially , but by no m eans
exclusiv ely , for the later periods) with purely legendary “history ”; occasional
enigm atic v estiges of m y thological lore; etiological stories; archety pal fictions of
the founding fathers of the nation; folktales of heroes and wonder-working m en
of God; v erisim ilar inv entions of wholly fictional personages attached to the
progress of national history ; and fictionalized v ersions of known historical
figures. All of these narrativ es are presented as history , that is, as things that
really happened and that hav e som e significant consequence for hum an or
Israelite destiny . The only ev ident exceptions to this rule are Job, which in its
v ery sty lization seem s m anifestly a philosophic fable (hence the rabbinic
dictum “There was no such creature as Job; he is a parable”), and Jonah,

49
which, with its satiric and fantastic exaggerations, looks like a parabolic
illustration of the prophetic calling and of God’s univ ersality .

Despite the v ariegated character of these narrativ es, com posed as they were
by m any different hands ov er a period of sev eral centuries, I would like to
attem pt a rough generalization about the kind of literary project they
constitute. The ancient Hebrew writers, as I hav e already intim ated, seek
through the process of narrativ e realization to rev eal the enactm ent of God’s
purposes in historical ev ents. This enactm ent, howev er, is continuously
com plicated by a perception of two, approxim ately parallel, dialectical tensions.
One is a tension between the div ine plan and the disorderly character of actual
historical ev ents, or, to translate this opposition into specifically biblical term s,
between the div ine prom ise and its ostensible failure to be fulfilled; the other is a
tension between God’s will, His prov idential guidance, and hum an freedom , the
refractory nature of m an.

If one m ay presum e at all to reduce great achiev em ents to a com m on

denom inator, it m ight be possible to say that the depth with which hum an
nature is im agined in the Bible is a function of its being conceiv ed as caught in
the powerful interplay of this double dialectic between design and disorder,
prov idence and freedom . The v arious biblical narrativ es in fact m ay be usefully
seen as form ing a spectrum between the opposing extrem es of disorder and
design. Toward the disorderly end of things, where the recalcitrant facts of
known history hav e to be encom passed, including specific political m ov em ents,
m ilitary trium phs and rev ersals, and the like, would be Judges, Sam uel, and
Kings. In these books, the narrators and on occasion som e of the personages
struggle quite explicitly to reconcile their knowledge of the div ine prom ise with
their awareness of what is actually happening in history . At the other end of the
spectrum , near the pole of design, one m ight place the Book of Esther. This
postexilic story , which presents itself as a piece of political history affecting the
m ain diaspora com m unity , is in fact a kind of fairy tale—the lov ely dam sel,
guided by a wise godfather, is m ade queen and sav es her people—richly
em bellished with satiric inv ention; its com ic art departs from historical
v erisim ilitude in way s that preexilic Hebrew narrativ e seldom does, and the
story dem onstrates Israel’s historical trium ph against odds with a schem atic
neatness unlike that of earlier historicized fiction in the Bible.

50
 Som ewhere toward the m iddle of this spectrum would be Genesis, where the
sketchiness of the known historical m aterials (if that is what they are) allows
considerable latitude for the elucidation of a div ine plan, with, howev er, this
sense of design repeatedly counterbalanced by the awareness of m an’s unruly
nature, the perilous and im perious indiv iduality of the v arious hum an agents
in the div ine experim ent. Indiv iduality is play ed against prov idential design in
a rather different fashion in the Book of Ruth. Ruth, Naom i, and Boaz are
fictional inv entions, probably based on no m ore than nam es, if that, preserv ed
in national m em ory . In the brief span of this narrativ e, they exhibit in speech
and action traits of character that m ake them m em orable indiv iduals in a way
that the m ore schem atically conceiv ed Esther and Mordecai are not. But in
their plausible indiv iduality they also becom e exem plary figures, thus earning
them selv es a place in the national history ; Ruth, through her steadfastness, and
Boaz, through his kindness and his adherence to the procedures of legitim ate
succession, m ake them selv es the justified progenitors of the line of Dav id. The
Book of Ruth, then, which we m ight place near Genesis toward the pole of design
in our im aginary spectrum , is, because of its realistic psy chology and its
treatm ent of actual social institutions, a v erisim ilar historicized fiction, while
the Book of Esther seem s m ore a com ic fantasy utilizing pseudo-historical
m aterials.

Let m e risk a large conjecture, if only because it m ay help us get a clearer

sighting on the phenom enon we are considering. It m ay be that a sense of som e
adequate dialectical tension between these antitheses of div ine plan and the
sundry disorders of hum an perform ance in history serv ed as an im plicit
criterion for deciding which narrativ es were to be regarded as canonical. It
would be an understatem ent to say we possess only scanty inform ation about
the now lost body of uncanonical ancient Hebrew literature, but the few hints
that the Bible itself prov ides would seem to point in two opposite directions. On
the one hand, in Kings we are repeatedly told that details skim ped in the
narrativ e at hand can be discov ered by referring to the Chronicles of the Kings
of Judea and the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. Those books, one m ay assum e,
were excluded from the authoritativ e national tradition and hence not
preserv ed because they were court histories, probably partisan in character,
and erred on the side of the cataloguing of historical ev ents without an

51
inform ing v ision of God’s design working through history . On the other hand,
brief and enigm atic allusion with citation is m ade in Num bers, Joshua, and
Sam uel to the Book of Yashar and the Book of the Battles of Yahweh. The latter
sounds as though it was a list of m ilitary trium phs with God as principal actor;
the form er, to judge by the two fragm ents quoted (Josh. 1 0:1 3 ; 2 Sam . 1 :1 8–
1 9 ), was probably a v erse narrativ e, perhaps a m artial epic with m iraculous
elem ents. I would v enture to guess that both books were felt to be too legendary
or ev en m y thological, too com m itted to the direct narrativ e tracing of God’s
design, without a sufficient counterweight of the m ixed stuff of recognizable
historical experience.

Let us direct our attention now to the Bible’s historical narrativ es proper in
order to understand m ore concretely what is im plied by the fictional com ponent
in describing them as historicized fiction. The large cy cle of stories about Dav id,
which is surely one of the m ost stunning im aginativ e achiev em ents of ancient
literature, prov ides an instructiv e central instance of the intertwining of
history and fiction. This narrativ e, though it m ay hav e certain folkloric
em bellishm ents (such as Dav id’s v ictory ov er Goliath), m ight actually be based
on firm historical facts, as m odern research has tended to confirm : despite som e
radical skeptics, it seem s at least plausible that there really was a Dav id who
fought a civ il war against the house of Saul, achiev ed undisputed sov ereignty
ov er the twelv e tribes, conquered Jerusalem , founded a dy nasty , created a
sm all em pire, and was succeeded by his son Solom on. Bey ond these broad
outlines, it is quite possible that m any of the narrated details about Dav id,
including m atters bearing on the com plications of his conjugal life and his
relations with his children, m ay hav e been reported on good authority .

Nev ertheless, these stories are not, strictly speaking, historiography , but
rather the im aginativ e reenactm ent of history by a gifted writer who organizes
his m aterials along certain them atic biases and according to his own
rem arkable intuition of the psy chology of the characters. He feels entirely free,
one should rem em ber, to inv ent interior m onologue for his characters; to
ascribe feeling, intention, or m otiv e to them when he chooses; to supply
v erbatim dialogue (and he is one of literature’s m asters of dialogue) for
occasions when no one but the actors them selv es could hav e had knowledge of

52
exactly what was said. The author of the Dav id stories stands in basically the
sam e relation to Israelite history as Shakespeare stands to English history in his
history play s. Shakespeare was obv iously not free to hav e Henry V lose the
battle of Agincourt, or to allow som eone else to lead the English forces there, but,
working from the hints of historical tradition, he could inv ent a kind of
Bildungsroman for the y oung Prince Hal; surround him with inv ented
characters that would serv e as foils, m irrors, obstacles, aids in his dev elopm ent;
create a language and a psy chology for the king that are the writer’s own
achiev em ent, m aking out of the stuff of history a powerful projection of hum an
possibility . That is essentially what the author of the Dav id cy cle does for Dav id,
Saul, Abner, Joab, Jonathan, Absalom , Michal, Abigail, and a host of other
characters.

One m em orable illustration am ong m any of this transm utation of history

into fiction is Dav id’s great confrontation with Saul at the cav e in the
wilderness of Ein Gedi (l Sam uel 2 4 ). The m anic king, one recalls, while in
pursuit of the y oung Dav id, has gone into a cav e to reliev e him self, where by
chance Dav id and his m en hav e taken refuge. Dav id sneaks up to Saul and cuts
off a corner of his robe. Then he is sm itten with rem orse for hav ing perpetrated
this sy m bolic m utilation on the anointed king, and he sternly holds his m en in
check while the unwitting Saul walks off from the cav e unharm ed. Once the
king is at a distance, Dav id follows him out of the cav e. Holding the excised
corner of the robe, he hails Saul and shouts out to his erstwhile pursuer one of
his m ost rem arkable speeches, in which he expresses fealty and rev erence to the
LORD’s anointed one, disav ows any ev il intention toward him (with the corner
of the robe as ev idence of what he could hav e done but did not do), and
proclaim s his own hum ble status: “After whom has the king of Israel com e
forth?” he say s in v erse-like sy m m etry . “After whom are y ou chasing? After a
dead dog, after a single flea?” (1 Sam . 2 4 :1 5).

At the end of this relativ ely lengthy speech, the narrator holds us in suspense
for still another m om ent by choosing to preface Saul’s response with a chain of
introductory phrases: “And it happened when Dav id finished speaking these
words to Saul, that Saul said”—and then what he say s has a breathtaking
brev ity after Dav id’s stream of words, and constitutes one of those astonishing
rev ersals that m ake the rendering of character in these stories so arresting: “‘Is

53
this y our v oice, m y son Dav id?’ and Saul raised his v oice and wept” (1 Sam .
2 4 :1 7 ). The point is not m erely that the author has m ade up dialogue to which
he could hav e had no “docum entary ” access; Thucy dides, after all, does that as
a sty lized technique of representing the v arious positions m aintained by
different historical personages. In the biblical story the inv ented dialogue is an
expression of the author’s im aginativ e grasp of his protagonists as distinctiv e
m oral and psy chological figures, of their em otion-fraught hum an intercourse
dram atically conceiv ed; and what that entire process of im agination essentially
m eans is the creation of fictional characters.

As elsewhere in biblical narrativ e, the rev elation of character is effected with

striking artistic econom y : the specification of external circum stances, setting,
and gesture is held to a bare m inim um , and dialogue is m ade to carry a large
part of the freight of m eaning. To Dav id’s im passioned, elaborate rhetoric of self-
justification, Saul responds with a kind of choked cry : “Is this y our v oice, m y
son Dav id?” Perhaps he asks this out of sheer am azem ent at what he has just
heard, or because he is too far off to m ake out Dav id’s face clearly , or because his
ey es are blinded with tears, which would be an apt em blem of the condition of
m oral blindness that has prev ented him from seeing Dav id as he really is. In
connection with this last possibility , one suspects there is a deliberate if
approxim ate echo of the blind Isaac’s words to his son Jacob (after asking, “Who
are y ou m y son?” [Gen. 2 7 :1 8] Isaac proclaim s, “The v oice is the v oice of Jacob”
[Gen. 2 7 :2 2 ]). The allusion, which com plicates the m eaning of the present
encounter between an older and a y ounger m an in a num ber of way s, is not one
that a historical Saul would hav e been apt to m ake on the spot, but which a
writer with the priv ilege of fictional inv ention could brilliantly contriv e for this
shadow-haunted king whose own firstborn son will not reign after him .

Perhaps it m ight be objected that the Dav id stories are m erely the exception
that prov es the rule—a sunburst of im aginativ e literary activ ity in a series of
historical books that are, after all, chronicles of known ev ents v ariously
em broidered with folklore and underscored for theological em phasis. Let us
consider, then, a passage from that long catalogue of m ilitary uprisings, the
Book of Judges, where no serious claim s could be m ade for com plexity of
characterization or for subtlety of them atic dev elopm ent, and see if we can still
observ e the m odalities of prose fiction in what is told and how it is told. I should

54
like to take the story of the assassination of Eglon, King of Moab, by Ehud, the
son of Gera (Judges 3 ). In the absence of conv incing ev idence to the contrary ,
let us assum e the historical truth of the story , which seem s plausible enough:
that a tough, clev er guerrilla leader nam ed Ehud, from the tribe of Benjam in
(known for its m artial skills), cut down Eglon m ore or less in the m anner
described, then m ustered Israelite forces in the hill country of Ephraim for a
successful rebellion, which was followed by a long period of relief from Moabite
dom ination. Only the form ulaic num ber of twice forty at the end (“And the
land was quiet eighty y ears” [Judg. 3 :3 0]) would patently appear not to
correspond to historical fact. Where, then, in this succinct political chronicle, is
there room to talk about prose fiction? Here is how the m ain part of the story
reads:
1 5. And the Israelites cried out to the LORD, and the LORD raised up a
rescuer for them , Ehud the son of Gera the Benjam inite, a left-handed
m an. And the Israelites sent tribute in his hand to Eglon, King of Moab.
1 6 . And Ehud m ade him self a double-edged sword a gomed long and
strapped it under his garm ents on his right thigh. 1 7 . And he presented
the tribute to Eglon, King of Moab—and Eglon was a v ery fat m an. 1 8.
And it happened when he had finished presenting the tribute, that he
sent away the people bearing the tribute. 1 9 . And he had com e from
Pesilim near Gilgal. And he said, “A secret word I hav e for y ou, king.”
And he said, “Silence!” And all those standing in attendance on him went
out from his presence. 2 0. When Ehud had com e to him , he was sitting
alone in the cool upper cham ber that he had. And Ehud said, “A word of
God I hav e for y ou,” and he rose from his seat. 2 1 . And Ehud reached with
his left hand and took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his
belly . 2 2 . And the hilt, too, went in after the blade and the fat closed ov er
the blade, for he did not withdraw the sword from the belly and [the filth
burst out]. 7 2 3 . And Ehud went out to the v estibule and closed the doors
of the upper cham ber on him and locked them . 2 4 . He had just gone out
when the courtiers cam e and, look, the doors were locked. And they said,
“He m ust be reliev ing him self in the cool cham ber.” 2 5. And they waited
a long while, and, look, no one was opening the doors of the upper
cham ber. And they took the key and opened them , and, look, their m aster
was fallen to the ground, dead.

55
 It will be observ ed at once that the detailed attention giv en here to the
im plem ent and technique of killing, which would be norm al in the I liad, is
rather uncharacteristic of the Hebrew Bible. One m ay assum e that Ehud’s bold
resourcefulness in carry ing out this assassination, which threw the Moabites
into disarray and enabled the insurrection to succeed, was rem arkable enough
for the chronicler to want to report it circum stantially . Each of the details,
then, contributes to a clear understanding of just how the thing was done
(clearer, of course, for the ancient audience than for us since we no longer know
m uch about the floor plan of the sort of Canaanite sum m er residence fav ored by
Moabite kings and therefore m ay hav e a little difficulty in reconstructing
Ehud’s entrances and exits). The left-handed Benjam inite warriors were known
for their prowess, but Ehud also counts on his left-handedness as part of his
strategy of surprise: a sudden m ov em ent of the left hand will not
instantaneously be construed by the king as a m ov em ent of a weapon hand.
Ehud also counts on the likelihood that Eglon will be inclined to trust him as a
v assal bringing tribute and that the “secret” he prom ises to confide to the king
will thus be understood as a piece of intelligence v olunteered by an Israelite
collaborator or perhaps as an oracle. The dagger or short sword (ḥerev) is of
course strapped to Ehud’s right thigh for easy drawing with the left hand; it is
short enough to hide under his clothing, long enough to do Eglon’s business
without the killer’s hav ing to be unduly close to his v ictim , and double-edged to
ensure the lethalness of one quick thrust. Eglon’s encum brance of fat will m ake
him an easier target as he awkwardly rises from his seat, and perhaps Ehud
leav es the weapon buried in the flesh in order not to splatter blood on him self, so
that he can walk out through the v estibule unsuspected and m ake his escape.
One com m entator has ingeniously proposed that ev en the sordid detail of the
release of the anal sphincter in the death spasm has its role in the exposition of
the m echanics of the assassination: the courtiers outside, detecting the odor,
assum e that Eglon has locked the door because he is perform ing a bodily
function, and so they wait long enough to enable Ehud to get away safely . 8

Yet if all this is the scrupulous report of a historical act of political terrorism ,
the writer has giv en his historical m aterial a forceful them atic shape through a

56
skillful m anipulation of the prose narrativ e m edium . What em erges is not
sim ply a circum stantial account of the Moabite king’s destruction but a satiric
v ision of it, at once shrewd and jubilant. The writer’s im agination of the ev ent is
inform ed by an im plicit ety m ologizing of Eglon’s nam e, which suggests the
Hebrew ʿegel, calf. The ruler of the occupy ing Moabite power turns out to be a
fatted calf readied for slaughter, and perhaps ev en the epithet bari, “fat,” is a
play on meri, “fatling,” a sacrificial anim al occasionally bracketed with calf.
Eglon’s fat is both the token of his phy sical ponderousness, his v ulnerability to
Ehud’s sudden blade, and the em blem of his regal stupidity . Perhaps it m ay also
hint at a kind of grotesque fem inization of the Moabite leader: Ehud “com es to”
the king, an idiom also used for sexual entry , and there is som ething hideously
sexual about the description of the dagger thrust. There m ay also be a deliberate
sexual nuance in the “secret thing” Ehud brings to Eglon, in the way the two
are locked together alone in a cham ber, and in the sudden opening of locked
entries at the conclusion of the story . 9

Ehud’s claim to hav e a secret m essage for the king is accepted im m ediately
and without qualification by Eglon’s confidential “Silence!” (or perhaps one
m ight translate the onom atopoeic term as sssh!), the Moabite either failing to
notice that Ehud has brusquely addressed him as “King” without the polite “My
lord” (ʾadoni) or construing this om ission sim ply as ev idence of Ehud’s urgency .
When the two are alone and Ehud again turns to Eglon, he drops ev en the bare
title, flatly stating, “A word of God I hav e for y ou.” This statem ent is a rather
obv ious but nev ertheless effectiv e piece of dram atic irony : the secret thing—the
Hebrew term davar, can m ean word, m essage, or thing—hidden beneath Ehud’s
garm ent is in fact the word of God that the div inely “raised” Benjam inite
cham pion is about to bring hom e im placably to the corpulent king. Hearing
that the prom ised political secret is actually an oracle, Eglon rises, perhaps in
sheer eagerness to know the rev elation, perhaps as an act of accepted decorum
for receiv ing an oracular com m unication, and now Ehud can cut him down.

The courtiers’ erroneous assum ption that their bulky m onarch is taking his
leisurely tim e ov er the cham ber pot is a touch of scatological hum or at the
expense of both king and followers, while it im plicates them in the satiric
portray al of the king’s credulity . This last effect is heightened by the

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presentation of their direct speech at the end of v erse 2 4 , and the switch of the
narrativ e to their point of v iew in v erses 2 3 and 2 4 . “The courtiers cam e and,
look, the doors of the upper cham ber were locked.... They waited a long tim e
and, look, no one was opening the doors of the upper cham ber, and they took the
key s and opened them , and, look, their m aster was fallen on the ground, dead.”
The sy ntax of the concluding clause nicely follows the rapid stages of their
perception as at last they are disabused of their illusion: first they see their king
prostrate, and then they realize, clim actically , that he is dead. An enem y ’s
obtuseness is alway s an inv iting target for satire in tim e of war, but here the
exposure of Moabite stupidity has a double them atic function: to show the
blundering helplessness of the pagan oppressor when faced with a liberator
raised up by the all-knowing God of Israel, and to dem onstrate how these
gullible Moabites, depriv ed of a leader, are bound to be inept in the war that
im m ediately ensues.

In fact, great num bers of the Moabites are slaughtered at the fords of the
Jordan, the location of the debacle perhaps suggesting that they allowed
them selv es to be drawn into an actual am bush, or at any rate, that they
foolishly rushed into places where the entrenched Israelites could hold them at a
terrific strategic disadv antage. Ehud’s assassination of Eglon, then, is not only
connected causally with the subsequent Moabite defeat but it is also a kind of
em blem atic prefiguration of it. The link between the regicide and the war of
liberation is reinforced by two punning v erbal clues. Ehud thrusts (tqʿ) the
sword into Eglon’s belly (v erse 2 1 ), and as soon as he m akes good his escape
(v erse 2 7 ), he blasts the ram ’s horn—the sam e v erb, tqʿ—to rally his troops. 1 0
The Israelites kill 1 0,000 Moabites, “ev ery one a lusty m an and a brav e m an”
(v erse 2 9 ), but the word for “lusty ,” shamen, also m eans “fat,” so the Moabites
are “laid low [or subjugated] under the hand of Israel” (v erse 3 0) in a neat
parallel to the fate of their fat m aster under the swift left hand of Ehud. In all
this, as I hav e said, it is quite possible that the writer faithfully represents the
historical data without addition or substantiv e em bellishm ent. The
organization of the narrativ e, howev er, its lexical and sy ntactic choices, its
sm all shifts in point of v iew, its brief but strategic uses of dialogue, produce an
im aginativ e reenactm ent of the historical ev ent, conferring upon it a strong
attitudinal definition and discov ering in it a pattern of m eaning. It is perhaps

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less historicized fiction than fictionalized history —history in which the feeling
and the m eaning of ev ents are concretely realized through the technical
resources of prose fiction.

To round out this ov erv iew of the spectrum of fictional m odalities in the
Bible’s sacred history , I should like to return to Genesis for a concluding
illustration—this tim e, from the patriarchal narrativ es, which, unlike the story
of the first ancestors of hum ankind, are firm ly linked to Israelite national
history . The linkage, to be sure, would appear to be m ore the writers’
attribution than the result of any dependable historical traditions. Many
m odern scholars hav e assum ed that the patriarchs are the inv ented figures of
early Hebrew folklore elaborated on by later writers, particularly in order to
explain political arrangem ents am ong the twelv e tribes generations after the
Conquest. But ev en if one follows the inclination of som e contem porary
com m entators to see a possible historical kernel in som e of these tales, it is
obv ious that, in contrast to our exam ples from Judges and the Dav id story , the
authors, writing centuries after the supposed ev ents, had scant historical data
to work with. To what degree they believ ed the v arious traditions they
inherited were actually historical is by no m eans clear, but if caution m ay deter
us from apply ing a term like “inv ention” to their activ ity , it still seem s likely
that they exercised a good deal of shaping power ov er their m aterials as they
articulated them . The point I should like to stress is that the im m em orial
inv entions, fabrications, or projections of folk tradition are not in them selv es
fiction, which depends on the particularizing im agination of the indiv idual
writer. The authors of the patriarchal narrativ es exhibit just such an
im agination, transform ing archety pal plots into the dram atic interaction of
com plex, probingly rendered characters. These stories are “historicized” both
because they are presented as hav ing a m inute causal relation to known
historical circum stances and because (as Schneidau argues) they hav e som e of
the irregular, “m etony m ic” quality of real historical concatenation; they are
fiction because the national archety pes hav e been m ade to assum e the
distinctiv e lineam ents of indiv idual hum an liv es.

Biblical narrativ e in fact offers a particularly instructiv e instance of the birth

of fiction because it often exhibits the m ost arresting transitions from
generalized statem ent, genealogical lists, m ere sum m aries of characters and

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acts, to defined scene and concrete interaction between personages. Through the
sudden specifications of narrativ e detail and the inv ention of dialogue that
indiv idualizes the characters and focuses their relations, the biblical writers
giv e the ev ents they report a fictional tim e and place.

Let us consider a single succinct exam ple, Esau’s selling of the birthright to
Jacob (Genesis 2 5):
2 7 . And the lads grew up, and Esau was a m an skilled in hunting, a m an
of the field, and Jacob was a sim ple m an, a dweller in tents. 2 8. And Isaac
lov ed Esau for the gam e he brought him , but Rebekah lov ed Jacob. 2 9 .
And Jacob prepared a stew, and Esau cam e from the field, and he was
fam ished. 3 0. And Esau said to Jacob, “Let m e gulp down som e of this red
red stuff, for I am fam ished.” —Therefore is his nam e called Edom . 3 1 .
And Jacob said, “Sell now y our birthright to m e.” 3 2 . And Esau said,
“Look, I am at the point of death, so why do I need a birthright?” 3 3 . And
Jacob said, “Swear to m e now,” and he swore to him , and he sold his
birthright to Jacob. 3 4 . Then Jacob gav e Esau bread and lentil stew, and
he ate and he drank and he rose and he went off, and Esau spurned the
birthright.

Now Esau or Edom and Jacob or Israel are the epony m ous founders of two
neighboring and riv al peoples, as the text has just forcefully rem inded us in the
oracle preceding their birth (“Two nations—in y our wom b, / two peoples from
y our loins shall issue. / People ov er people shall prev ail, / the elder, the
y ounger’s slav e.” [Gen. 2 5:2 3 ]). The story of the two riv al brothers v irtually
asks us to read it as a political allegory , to construe each of the twins as an
em bodim ent of his descendants’ national characteristics, and to understand the
course of their struggle as an outline of their future national destinies. The
ruddy Esau, hungry for the red stew, is the progenitor of Edom , by folk
ety m ology associated with ʾadom, the color red, so that the people are giv en a
kind of national em blem linked here with anim ality and gross appetite. This
negativ e characterization is probably sharpened, as E. A. Speiser has proposed,
by a borrowing from Near Eastern literary tradition: the red Esau, born with “a
m antle of hair all ov er,” would appear to allude to Enkidu of the Akkadian

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Gilgam esh Epic, whose birth is described in just this m anner, and who is also an
uncouth m an of the field. 1 1 What happens, howev er, when the story is read
entirely as a collision of national archety pes is strikingly illustrated by the
com m entaries of the early rabbis who—tending to interpret Edom as the
ty pological forerunner of Rom e—are relentless in m aking Esau out to be a
v icious brute, while Jacob the tent-dweller becom es the m odel of pious Israel
pondering the intricacies of God’s rev elation in the study of the Law. The
anachronism of such readings concerns us less than the way they project onto
the text, from their national-historical v iewpoint, a neat m oral polarity
between the brothers. The text itself, conceiv ing its personages in the fullness of
a m ature fictional im agination, presents m atters rather differently , as ev en
this brief passage from the larger Jacob-Esau story will suggest.

The episode begins with a schem atic enough contrast between Esau the
hunter and the sedentary Jacob. This apparently neat opposition, howev er,
contains a lurking possibility of irony in the odd epithet tam attached to Jacob
in v erse 2 7 . Most translators hav e rendered it by following the im m ediate
context, and so hav e proposed som ething like “m ild,” “plain,” or ev en “retiring”
as an English equiv alent. Perhaps this was in fact one recognized m eaning of the
term , but it should be noted that all the other biblical occurrences of the word—
and it is frequently used, both in adjectiv al and nom inativ e form s—refer to
innocence, sim plicity , or m oral integrity . A little earlier in Genesis (2 0:5–6 )
Abraham professed the “innocence of his heart” (tom-levav); in contrast to this
collocation, Jerem iah will announce (Jer. 1 7 :9 ) that the “heart is treacherous”
(ʿaqov ha-lev), using the sam e v erbal root that Esau sees in Jacob’s nam e
(Yaʿaqov) as an ety m ological signature of his treachery . This usage opens the
possibility that we are dealing here with recognized antony m s, both of them
com m only bound in idiom atic com pounds to the word for heart. Jacob, Ya
ʿaqov, whose nam e will soon be interpreted as the one who deceiv es (the
Hebrew could be construed as “he will deceiv e”), is about to carry out an act if
not of deception at least of shrewd calculation, and the choice of an epithet
suggesting innocence as an introduction to the episode is bound to giv e us pause,
to m ake us puzzle ov er the m oral nature of Jacob—an enigm a we shall still be
try ing to fathom twenty chapters later when he is an old m an worn by
experience, at last reunited with his lost son Joseph and receiv ed in the court of

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Pharaoh.

The next v erse (Gen. 2 5:2 8) prov ides an alm ost diagram m atic illustration of
the Bible’s artful procedure of v ariously stipulating or suppressing m otiv e in
order to elicit m oral inferences and suggest certain am biguities. 1 2 Isaac’s
preference for Esau is giv en a causal explanation so specific that it v erges on
satire: he lov es the older twin because of his own fondness for gam e. Rebekah’s
lov e for Jacob is contrastiv ely stated without explanation. Presum ably , this
would suggest that her affection is not dependent on a m erely m aterial
conv enience that the son m ight prov ide her, that it is a m ore justly grounded
preference. Rebekah’s m aternal solicitude, howev er, is not without its troubling
side, for we shall soon see a passiv e and rather tim id Jacob briskly m aneuv ered
about by his m other so that he will receiv e Isaac’s blessing. This brief statem ent,
then, of parental preferences is both an interesting characterization of husband
and wife and an effectiv ely reticent piece of exposition in the story of the two
brothers.

The twins then spring to life as fictional characters when the narration m ov es
into dialogue (Gen. 2 5:3 0–3 3 ). Biblical Hebrew, as far as we can tell, does not
incorporate in direct speech m anifestly different lev els of diction, dev iations
from standard gram m ar, regional or class dialects; but the writers, ev en in
putting “norm ativ e” Hebrew in the m ouths of their personages, find way s of
differentiating spoken language according to character. Esau asks for the stew
with a v erb used for the feeding of anim als (hilʿit)—one m ight suggest the force
of the locution in English by rendering it as “let m e cram m y m aw”—and, all
inarticulate appetite, he cannot ev en think of the word for stew but only points
to it pantingly , calling it “this red red stuff.” His explanation, howev er, “for I
am fam ished,” is factually precise, as it echoes v erbatim what the narrator has
just told us. In the first instance, that is, Esau does not choose an exaggeration,
like that of v erse 3 2 , but states his actual condition: a creature of appetite, he is
caught by the pangs of a terrible appetite. Esau speaks ov er the rum ble of a
growling stom ach with the whiff of the cooking stew in his nostrils. Jacob speaks
with a clear perception of legal form s and future consequences, addressing his
brother twice in the im perativ e—“Sell now ... swear to m e now”—without the
deferential particle of entreaty , na, that Esau used in his own initial words to his

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twin. When Jacob asks Esau to sell the birthright, he withholds the crucial “to
m e” till the end of his proposal with cautious rhetorical calculation. Fortunately
for him , Esau is too absorbed in his own im m ediate anguish—“I am at the point
of death”—to pay m uch attention to Jacob’s self-interest. After the transaction is
com pleted, as we m ov e back from dialogue to uninterrupted narration, Esau’s
precipitous character is m irrored sty listically in the rapid chain of v erbs—“and
he ate and he drank and he rose and he went off”—that indicates the uncouth
dispatch with which he “spurned,” or held in contem pt, his birthright.

What is one to m ake of this v iv id fictional realization of the scene in regard to

its ev ident national-historical signification? The two are not really at cross-
purposes, but certain com plications of m eaning are introduced in the process of
fictional representation. Esau, the episode m akes clear, is not spiritually fit to be
the v ehicle of div ine election, the bearer of the birthright of Abraham ’s seed. He
is altogether too m uch the slav e of the m om ent and of the body ’s ty ranny to
becom e the progenitor of the people prom ised by div ine cov enant to hav e a v ast
historical destiny to fulfill. His selling of the birthright in the circum stances
here described is in itself proof that he is not worthy to retain the birthright.

As the author, howev er, concretely im agines Jacob, what em erges from the
scene is m ore than sim ple Israelite (and anti-Edom ite) apologetics. Jacob is a
m an who thinks about the future, indeed, who often seem s worried about the
future, and we shall repeatedly see him m aking prudent stipulations in legal or
quasi-legal term s with God, with Laban, with his m y sterious nocturnal
adv ersary , about future circum stances. This qualifies him as a suitable bearer
of the birthright: historical destiny does not just happen; y ou hav e to know how
to m ake it happen, how to keep y our ey e on the distant horizon of present
ev ents. But this quality of wary calculation does not necessarily m ake Jacob
m ore appealing as a character and, indeed, m ay ev en raise som e m oral
questions about him . The contrast in this scene between the im petuous,
m iserably fam ished Esau and the shrewdly businesslike Jacob m ay not be
entirely to Jacob’s adv antage, and the episode is surely a little troubling in light
of the quality of “innocence” that the narrator has just fastened as an epithet to
the y ounger twin. His subsequent stealing of his blind father’s blessing by
pretending to be Esau (Genesis 2 7 ) sets him in a still m ore am biguous light; and
the judgm ent that Jacob has done wrong in taking what is, in a sense, his, is

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later confirm ed in the narrativ e, as Um berto Cassuto and other com m entators
as early as Late Antiquity hav e noted: Jacob becom es the v ictim of sy m m etrical
poetic justice, deceiv ed in the blindness of the night by hav ing Leah passed off
on him as Rachel, and rebuked in the m orning by the deceiv er, his father-in-
law, Laban: “It is not done thus in our place, to giv e the y ounger girl before the
firstborn” (Gen. 2 9 :2 6 ).

If one insists on seeing the patriarchal narrativ es strictly as paradigm s for

later Israelite history , one would hav e to conclude that the authors and redactor
of the Jacob story were political subv ersiv es raising oblique but dam aging
questions about the national enterprise. Actually , there m ay be som e
theological warrant for this introduction of am biguities into the story of Israel’s
epony m ous hero, for in the perspectiv e of ethical m onotheism , cov enantal
priv ileges by no m eans autom atically confer m oral perfection, and that
m onitory idea is perhaps som ething the writers wanted to bring to the attention
of their audiences. I do not think, though, that ev ery nuance of characterization
and ev ery turning of the plot in these stories can be justified in either m oral-
theological or national-historical term s. Perhaps this is the ultim ate difference
between any herm eneutic approach to the Bible and the literary approach that
I am proposing: in the literary perspectiv e there is latitude for the exercise of
pleasurable inv ention for its own sake, ranging from “m icroscopic” details like
sound-play to “m acroscopic” features like the psy chology of indiv idual
characters.

This need not im ply a blurring of necessary distinctions between sacred and
secular literature. The biblical authors are of course constantly , urgently
conscious of telling a story in order to rev eal the im perativ e truth of God’s works
in history and of Israel’s hopes and failings. Close attention to the literary
strategies through which that truth was expressed m ay actually help us to
understand it better, enable us to see the m inute elem ents of com plicating
design in the Bible’s sacred history . But it also seem s to m e im portant to
em phasize that the operation of the literary im agination dev elops a m om entum
of its own, ev en for a tradition of writers so theologically intent as these. Genesis
is not Pale Fire, but all fiction, including the Bible, is in som e sense a form of
play . Play in the sense I hav e in m ind enlarges rather than lim its the range of
m eanings of the text. For the classics of fiction, ancient and m odern, em body in

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a v ast v ariety of m odes the m ost serious play fulness, endlessly discov ering how
the perm utations of narrativ e conv entions, linguistic properties, and
im aginativ ely constructed personages and circum stances can cry stallize subtle
and abiding truths of experience in am using or arresting or gratify ing way s.
The Bible presents a kind of literature in which the prim ary im pulse would
often seem to be to prov ide instruction or at least necessary inform ation, not
m erely to delight. If, howev er, we fail to see that the creators of biblical
narrativ e were writers who, like writers elsewhere, took pleasure in exploring
the form al and im aginativ e resources of their fictional m edium , perhaps
som etim es unexpectedly capturing the fullness of their subject in the v ery play
of exploration, we shall m iss m uch that the biblical stories are m eant to conv ey .

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 3

Biblical Type-Scenes and the Uses of Convention

A COHERENT READING of any artwork, whatev er the m edium , requires som e

detailed awareness of the grid of conv entions upon which, and against which,
the indiv idual work operates. It is only in exceptional m om ents of cultural
history that these conv entions are explicitly codified, as in French neoclassicism
or in Arabic and Hebrew poetry of the Andalusian Golden Age, but an elaborate
set of tacit agreem ents between artist and audience about the ordering of the
artwork is at all tim es the enabling context in which the com plex
com m unication of art occurs. Through our awareness of conv ention we can
recognize significant or sim ply pleasing patterns of repetition, sy m m etry ,
contrast: we can discrim inate between the v erisim ilar and the fabulous, pick up
directional clues in a narrativ e work, see what is innov ativ e and what is
deliberately traditional at each nexus of the artistic creation.

One of the chief difficulties we encounter as m odern readers in perceiv ing the
artistry of biblical narrativ e is precisely that we hav e lost m ost of the key s to
the conv entions out of which it was shaped. The professional Bible scholars hav e
not offered m uch help in this regard, for their closest approxim ation to the
study of conv ention is form criticism , which is set on finding recurrent
regularities of pattern rather than the m anifold v ariations upon a pattern that
any sy stem of literary conv ention elicits; m oreov er, form criticism uses these
patterns for excav ativ e ends—to support hy potheses about the social or cultic
functions of the text, its historical ev olution, and so forth. Its identification of
patterns needs to be taken to another lev el, as I shall try to show in this chapter.
Before going on to describe what seem s to m e a central and, as far as I know,
unrecognized conv ention of biblical narrativ e, I would like to m ake clearer by
m eans of an analogy our dilem m a as m oderns approaching this ancient literary
corpus that has been so heav ily encrusted with nonliterary com m entaries.

Let us suppose that som e centuries hence only a dozen film s surv iv e from the
whole corpus of Holly wood westerns. As students of twentieth-century cinem a
screening the film s on an ingeniously reconstructed archaic projector, we notice

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a recurrent peculiarity : in elev en of the film s, the sheriff-hero has the sam e
anom alous neurological trait of hy perreflexiv ity —no m atter what the situation
in which his adv ersaries confront him , he is alway s able to pull his gun out of its
holster and fire before they , with their weapons poised, can pull the trigger. In
the twelfth film , the sheriff has a withered arm and, instead of a six-shooter, he
uses a rifle that he carries slung ov er his back. Now, elev en hy perreflexiv e
sheriffs are utterly im probable by any realistic standards—though one scholar
will no doubt propose that in the Old West the function of sheriff was generally
filled by m em bers of a hereditary caste that in fact had this genetic trait. The
scholars will then div ide between a m ajority that posits an original source-
western (designated Q) that has been im itated or im perfectly reproduced in a
whole series of later v ersions (Q1 , Q2 , etc.—the film s we hav e been screening)
and a m ore speculativ e m inority that proposes an old California Indian m y th
concerning a sky -god with arm s of lightning, of which all these film s are
scram bled and diluted secular adaptations. The twelfth film , in the v iew of both
schools, m ust be ascribed to a different cinem atic tradition.

The central point, of course, that these strictly historical hy potheses would
fail ev en to touch upon is the presence of conv ention. We contem porary v iewers
of westerns back in the era when the film s were m ade im m ediately recognize
the conv ention without hav ing to nam e it as such. Much of our pleasure in
watching westerns deriv es from our awareness that the hero, howev er sinister
the dangers loom ing ov er him , leads a charm ed life, that he will alway s in the
end prov e him self to be m ore of a m an than the bad guy s who stalk him , and the
fam iliar token of his indom itable m anhood is his inv ariable, often uncanny ,
quickness on the draw. For us, the recurrence of the hy perreflexiv e sheriff is not
an enigm a to be explained but, on the contrary , a necessary condition for telling
a western story in the film m edium as it should be told. With our easy
knowledge of the conv ention, m oreov er, we naturally see a point in the twelfth,
exceptional film that would be inv isible to the historical scholars. For in this
case, we recognize that the conv ention of the quick-drawing hero is present
through its deliberate suppression. Here is a sheriff who seem s to lack the
expected equipm ent for his role, but we note the daring assertion of m anly will
against alm ost im possible odds in the hero’s learning to m ake do with what he
has, training his left arm to whip his rifle into firing position with a swiftness

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that m akes it a m atch for the quickest draw in the West. 1

Som e of the analogous conv entions through which biblical narrators

v ariously worked out their tacit contract with their contem porary audiences
are perhaps, after three m illennia, no longer recov erable. Let m e be perfectly
candid about the inherent difficulty of our project. The key problem is not only
the centuries elapsed since this body of literature was created but the sm all
corpus of works that has surv iv ed. Within this sm all corpus, certain narrativ e
conv entions that are observ able on the “m icroscopic” lev el of the text, like the
form ulas for beginning and ending narrativ e units, can be identified with
considerable confidence because one can locate fifteen, twenty , or ev en m any
m ore instances in the Hebrew Bible. Other conv entions, howev er, that
determ ine larger patterns of recurrence in the “m acroscopic” aspects of the
stories and that are not strictly tied to sty listic form ulas, like the conv ention I
shall now attem pt to inv estigate, are bound to be m ore conjectural because,
giv en the lim ited corpus with which we hav e to work, we m ay be able to locate
confidently no m ore than fiv e or six signal occurrences. Nev ertheless, I think
that we m ay be able to recov er som e essential elem ents of ancient conv ention,
and thus to understand biblical narrativ e m ore precisely , if the questions we
ask of it assum e a fairly high degree of literary purposefulness.

The m ost crucial case in point is the perplexing fact that in biblical narrativ e
m ore or less the sam e story often seem s to be told two or three or m ore tim es
about different characters, or som etim es ev en about the sam e character in
different sets of circum stances. Three tim es a patriarch is driv en by fam ine to a
southern region where he pretends that his wife is his sister, narrowly av oids a
v iolation of the conjugal bond by the local ruler, and is sent away with gifts
(Gen. 1 2 :1 0–2 0; Gen. 2 0; Gen. 2 6 :1 –1 2 ). Twice Hagar flees into the wilderness
from Sarah’s hostility and discov ers a m iraculous well (Gen. 1 6 ; Gen. 2 1 :9 –2 1 ),
and that story itself seem s only a special v ariation of the recurrent story of
bitter riv alry between a barren, fav ored wife and a fertile co-wife or concubine.
That situation, in turn, suggests another oft-told tale in the Bible, of a wom an
long barren who is v ouchsafed a div ine prom ise of progeny , whether by God
him self or through a div ine m essenger or oracle, and who then giv es birth to a
hero.

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 Different repeated episodes hav e elicited different explanations, but the m ost
com m on strategy am ong scholars is to attribute ostensible duplication in the
narrativ es to a duplication of sources or to a tapping of different traditions by
one source, which am ounts to a kind of recurrent stam m er in the process of
transm ission, whether written or oral. One m ust grant that in quite a few
instances this is the m ost persuasiv e explanation for the duplication—as in the
case of the two banishm ents of Hagar, which hav e the distinct look of doublets.
Pushing the notion of doublets ev en farther, a m onograph by Robert C. Culley ,
Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Narrative, 2 first surv ey s som e recent
ethnographic studies of oral story telling in the West Indies and Africa and then
tentativ ely proposes that the sam e m echanism is present in biblical narrativ e.
Since the students of oral narration hav e observ ed that as a tale is told ov er and
ov er, changes occur in it and ev en the identities of its personages shift, Culley
suggests that the Bible m ay reflect the sam e phenom enon and that the
som ewhat distorted duplications of narrativ es in Scripture could well be
ev idence of oral transm ission. To m ake his point graphically , he ev en lay s out a
series of tables with parallel episodes in which m ore or less the sam e elem ents of
plot occur in different circum stances with different characters. As I stared at
Culley ’s schem atic tables, it gradually dawned on m e that he had m ade a
discov ery without realizing it. For what his tables of parallels and v ariants
actually rev eal are the lineam ents of a purposefully deploy ed literary
conv ention. The v ariations in the parallel episodes are not at all random, as a
scram bling by oral transm ission would im ply , and the repetitions them selv es
are no m ore “duplications” of a single ur-story than our elev en film s about a
fast-shooting sheriff were duplications of a single film .

In order to define this basic conv ention of biblical narrativ e, I am going to

borrow a concept from Hom er scholarship, though a couple of m ajor
m odifications of the concept will hav e to be m ade. Students of Hom er hav e
generally agreed that there are certain prom inent elem ents of repetitiv e
com positional pattern in both Greek epics that are a conscious conv ention, one
of which has been designated “ty pe-scene.” 3 The notion was first worked out by
Walter Arend in 1 9 3 3 (Die typischen Szenen bei Homer) before the oral-
form ulaic nature of the Hom eric poem s was understood. Since then, the ty pe-
scene has been plausibly connected with the special needs of oral com position,

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and a good deal of recent scholarship has been dev oted to showing the
sophisticated v ariations on the set patterns of the v arious ty pe-scenes in the
Hom eric epics. Very briefly , Arend’s notion is that there are certain fixed
situations that the poet is expected to include in his narrativ e and that he m ust
perform according to a set order of m otifs—situations like the arriv al, the
m essage, the v oy age, the assem bly , the oracle, the arm ing of the hero, and
som e half-dozen others. The ty pe-scene of the v isit, for exam ple, should unfold
according to the following fixed pattern: a guest approaches; som eone spots him ,
gets up, hurries to greet him ; the guest is taken by the hand, led into the room ,
inv ited to take the seat of honor; the guest is enjoined to feast; the ensuing m eal
is described. Alm ost any description of a v isit in Hom er will reproduce m ore or
less this sequence not because of an ov erlap of sources but because that is how
the conv ention requires such a scene to be rendered.

Som e of this obv iously cannot apply to biblical narrativ e because the epic
ty pe-scene inv olv es descriptiv e detail, while the Bible is not descriptiv e; and,
concom itantly , the ty pe-scene is a perform ance of a quotidian situation, and the
Bible touches on the quotidian only as a sphere for the realization of portentous
actions: if in the Bible som eone is brewing up a m ess of lentil stew, the reader
can rest assured that it is not to exhibit the pungency of ancient Hebrew cuisine
but because som e fatal transaction will be carried out with the stew, which ev en
prov es to hav e a sy m bolically appropriate color (see chapter 2 ).

Nev ertheless, I should like to propose that there is a series of recurrent

narrativ e episodes attached to the careers of biblical heroes that are analogous
to Hom eric ty pe-scenes in that they are dependent on the m anipulation of a
fixed constellation of predeterm ined m otifs. Since biblical narrativ e
characteristically catches its protagonists only at the critical and rev ealing
points in their liv es, the biblical ty pe-scene occurs not in the rituals of daily
existence but at the crucial junctures in the liv es of the heroes, from conception
and birth to betrothal to deathbed. Not ev ery ty pe-scene will occur for ev ery
m ajor hero, though often the absence of a particular ty pe-scene m ay itself be
significant. Som e of the m ost com m only repeated biblical ty pe-scenes I hav e
been able to identify are the following: the annunciation (and I take the term
from Christian iconography precisely to underscore the elem ents of fixed
conv ention) of the birth of the hero to his barren m other; the encounter with

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the future betrothed at a well; the epiphany in the field; the initiatory trial;
danger in the desert and the discov ery of a well or other source of sustenance;
the testam ent of the dy ing hero.

My notion of a conv ention of ty pe-scene, to be sure, is in som e way s related to

v arious conceptions of fixed and recurrent patterns that hav e been discussed at
length in biblical scholarship, but I would argue that the recognition of pattern
as literary conv ention leads to a different understanding of how the patterns
actually work. The m ost influential approach to recurrent pattern in biblical
literature has been the concept of Gattung (“class,” “genre,” or in som e instances
“subgenre”) first articulated in the early twentieth century by Herm ann
Gunkel, which then becam e a key to form -critical analy sis. But through the
concept of Gattung, Gunkel and his followers hav e sought to determ ine the so-
called life-setting of the v arious biblical texts, a line of speculation that decades
of inv estigation hav e shown to be highly problem atic—just as problem atic as
the concom itant enterprise of dating the texts by identify ing an ev olution from
sim ple to elaborate v ersions of the Gattungen. In contrast to a Gattung, a literary
conv ention m ay in som e instances reflect certain social or cultural realities but
is bound to offer a highly m ediated, sty lized im age of such realities: in the
literary conv ention, culture has been transform ed into artful text, which is
rather different from form -criticism ’s tendency to insist on the function
perform ed by text in culture. What accom panies this assum ption of public
context and function in the notion of Gattung is a driv e to identify com m on
form ulas in different texts. One of course needs to recognize the form ulas if they
are there in order to see what is going on in the text, but as I shall try to
illustrate, what is finally m ore significant is the inv entiv e freshness with which
form ulas are recast and redeploy ed in each new instance.

How all of this m ay bring us closer to an understanding of the artistry of

biblical narrativ e will, I hope, becom e apparent through an extended analy sis of
one such ty pe-scene. I shall focus on the betrothal, for it offers som e particularly
interesting and inv entiv e v ariations of the set pattern. Conv eniently , this is one
of the exam ples of “duplications” that Culley sets out in his tables with
schem atic clarity . What I would suggest is that when a biblical narrator—and
his predecessors m ight hav e been oral story tellers, though that rem ains a
m atter of conjecture—cam e to the m om ent of his hero’s betrothal, both he and

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his audience were aware that the scene had to unfold in particular
circum stances, according to a fixed order. If som e of those circum stances were
altered or suppressed, or if the scene were actually om itted, that com m unicated
som ething to the audience as clearly as the withered arm of our twelfth sheriff
would say som ething to a film audience. The betrothal ty pe-scene, then, m ust
take place with the future bridegroom , or his surrogate, hav ing journey ed to a
foreign land. There he encounters a girl—the term “ naʿarah” inv ariably occurs
unless the m aiden is identified as so-and-so’s daughter—or girls at a well.
Som eone, either the m an or the girl, then draws water from the well;
afterward, the girl or girls rush to bring hom e the news of the stranger’s arriv al
(the v erbs “hurry ” and “run” are giv en recurrent em phasis at this junction of
the ty pe-scene); finally , a betrothal is concluded between the stranger and the
girl, in the m ajority of instances, only after he has been inv ited to a m eal.

The archety pal expressiv eness of this whole ty pe-scene is clear enough. The
hero’s em ergence from the im m ediate fam ily circle—though two of the m ost
fam ous betrothal scenes stress endogam y (Gen. 2 4 :1 0–6 1 ; Gen. 2 9 :1 –2 0)—to
discov er a m ate in the world outside is figured in the y oung m an’s journey to a
foreign land; or perhaps the foreign land is chiefly a geographical correlativ e for
the sheer fem ale otherness of the prospectiv e wife. The well at an oasis is
obv iously a sy m bol of fertility and, in all likelihood, also a fem ale sy m bol. (The
poem in Prov erbs 5 explicitly uses the well as a m etaphor for fem ale sexuality .)
The drawing of water from the well is the act that em blem atically establishes a
bond—m ale-fem ale, host-guest, benefactorbenefited—between the stranger and
the girl, and its apt result is the excited running to bring the news, the gestures
of hospitality , the actual betrothal. The plot of the ty pe-scene, then,
dram atically enacts the com ing together of m utually unknown parties in the
m arriage. It m ay hav e ultim ately originated in prebiblical traditions of
folklore, but that is a m atter of conjecture peripheral to the understanding of its
literary use. And, in any case, as is true of all original art, what is really
interesting is not the schem a of conv ention but what is done in each indiv idual
application of the schem a to giv e it a sudden tilt of innov ation or ev en to
refashion it radically for the im aginativ e purposes at hand.

The first occurrence in the Bible of the betrothal ty pe-scene is also by far the

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m ost elaborate v ersion of it—the encounter at the well in Aram -Naharaim
between Abraham ’s serv ant and Rebekah (Gen. 2 4 :1 0–6 1 ). All the elem ents of
the conv ention we hav e just rev iewed are present here. The serv ant, as Isaac’s
surrogate, has been sent by Abraham all the way back to the fam ily hom e in
Mesopotam ia to seek a bride for his m aster’s son. The serv ant, com bining, as it
were, a knowledge of social custom with the requirem ents of the literary
conv ention, carefully stations him self by the well toward ev ening, when each
day the local girls com e out to draw water. The naʿarah who im m ediately turns
up is, of course, Rebekah. She draws water for the stranger and his cam els. Ev en
before he assures him self of her fam ily background, he loads her with jewelry ;
she runs hom e with the news of his arriv al; her brother Laban com es out to
welcom e the stranger, sets a m eal before him , and negotiations follow,
concluding with an agreem ent to betroth Rebekah to Isaac.

The m ost striking feature of this v ersion of the ty pe-scene is its slow, stately
progress, an effect achiev ed by the extensiv e use of dialogue, by a specification
of detail clearly bey ond the norm of biblical narrativ e, and, abov e all, by a v ery
elaborate use of the dev ice of v erbatim repetition, which is a standard resource
of the biblical writers. 4 These strategies of retardation are im portant because in
this particular instance the betrothal is conceiv ed ceremoniously, as a form al
treaty between two branches of the Nahor clan, and so the bestowal of gifts is
specified here, and we are giv en the precise diplom atic language in which the
betrothal negotiations are carried out. We also get a concise, dev astating
characterization of Laban—“And when he saw the nose-ring and the bracelets on
his sister’s arm s, ... he said, ‘Com e in, O blessed of the LORD’” (Gen. 2 4 :3 0–3 1 )—
because his canny , grasping nature will be im portant when a generation later
Jacob com es back to Aram -Naharaim to find his bride at a nearby rural well.

All these features are m erely elaborations of or accretions to the conv entional
constellation of m otifs. The role play ed here, on the other hand, by bridegroom
and bride is a pointed div ergence from the conv ention. Isaac is conspicuous by
his absence from the scene: this is in fact the only instance where a surrogate
rather than the m an him self m eets the girl at the well. That substitution nicely
accords with the entire career of Isaac, for he is m anifestly the m ost passiv e of
the patriarchs. We hav e already seen him as a bound v ictim for whose life a

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ram is substituted; later, as a father, he will prefer the son who can go out to the
field and bring him back gam e, and his one extended scene will be ly ing in bed,
weak and blind, while others act on him .

As a com plem ent to this absence of the bridegroom , it is only in this betrothal
scene that the girl, not the stranger, draws water from the well. Indeed, the
narrator goes out of his way to giv e weight to this act by presenting Rebekah as
a continuous whirl of purposeful activ ity . In four short v erses (Gen. 2 4 :1 6 , 1 8–
2 0) she is the subject of elev en v erbs of action and one of speech, going down to
the well, drawing water, filling the pitcher, pouring, giv ing drink. One m ight
note that the two v erbs of rushing and hurry ing (rutz and maher) generally
reserv ed for the bringing of the news of the stranger’s arriv al are here also
repeatedly attached to Rebekah’s actions at the well, and the effect of rapid
bustling activ ity is reinforced by the v erbatim recapitulation of this m om ent
with its v erbs (v erses 4 5–4 6 ) in the serv ant’s report to Laban. Later, Rebekah
will take the initiativ e at a crucial m om ent in the story in order to obtain the
paternal blessing for her fav ored son, Jacob, and again she will be the subject of
a rapid chain of v erbs, hurriedly taking and cooking and dressing and giv ing
before Esau can return from the field. Rebekah is to becom e the shrewdest and
the m ost potent of the m atriarchs, and so it is entirely appropriate that she
should dom inate her betrothal scene. She is im m ediately identified (v erse 1 6 )
with unconv entional explicitness as the suitable bride for both her beauty and
her unim peachable v irginity . Then in her actions and speech we see her
energy , her considerate courtesy , her sense of quiet self-possession.
Exceptionally and aptly , the future m atriarch’s departure at the end of the
ty pe-scene is m arked by the cerem onial flourish of a form al v erse inset, the
blessing conferred on her by the m em bers of her fam ily : “Our sister, becom e
hence / m y riads teem ing. // May y our seed take hold of / the gates of its foes”
(Gen. 2 4 :6 0).

How differently the sam e conv entional m otifs can be deploy ed is m ade clear
in the next instance of the betrothal ty pe-scene, Jacob’s encounter at the well
with Rachel (Gen. 2 9 :1 –2 0). Here the stranger com es not as an official
em issary but as a refugee from his brother’s wrath, accom panied not by cam els
and gifts but only , as he will later recall, by his walking-staff. At once, we are
taken into the scene literally through Jacob’s ey es (v erse 2 ): “And he saw, and,

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look [vehinneh], there was a well in the field, and, look, three flocks of sheep were
ly ing beside it.” 5 This particular betrothal is v ery m uch Jacob’s personal story ,
one that will inv olv e a deep em otional attachm ent rather than a fam ily treaty
(“And Jacob serv ed sev en y ears for Rachel, and they seem ed in his ey es but a
few day s in his lov e for her” [Gen. 2 9 :2 0]), and so it is fitting that we com e to
the well through his point of v iew. The scene takes place by a well in the fields,
not by a well in town as in Genesis 2 4 , for the whole story of Jacob, his two
wiv es, his two concubines, and his schem ing father-in-law will unfold against a
background of pastoral activ ity , with close attention to the econom ics and ethics
of sheep and cattle herding.

Jacob questions the shepherds at the well about the nam e of the place and
then about his uncle Laban. In stark contrast to the stately m ov em ent of the
dialogue in Genesis 2 4 , with its form al m odes of address and its am ple
sy nony m ity , the dialogue here is a rapid exchange of brief questions and
answers that seem s alm ost colloquial by com parison; this again is an
appropriate prelude to Jacob’s quickpaced story of v igorously pursued actions,
deceptions, and confrontations. The form ula prev iously used to indicate an
im m ediate concatenation of ev ents in the entrance of the future bride—“[The
ser v ant] had barely finished speaking [to God] when, look, Rebekah was com ing
out” (Gen. 2 4 :1 5)—occurs here to interrupt the dialogue between Jacob and the
shepherds: “He was still speaking with them when Rachel arriv ed” (Gen. 2 9 :9 ).

In this case, not only does the future bridegroom take care of the drawing of
water, but he has an obstacle to ov ercom e—the stone on the m outh of the well.
This m inor v ariation of the conv ention contributes to the consistent
characterization of Jacob, for we already know him , as his nam e at birth
(Yaʿaqov) has been ety m ologized, as the “heel-grabber” or wrestler, and we
shall continue to see him as the contender, the m an who seizes his fate, tackles
his adv ersaries, with his own two hands. If the well of the betrothal scene is in
general associated with wom an and fertility , it is particularly appropriate that
this one should be blocked by an obstacle, for Jacob will obtain the wom an he
wants only through great labor, against resistance, and ev en then God will, in
the relev ant biblical idiom , “shut up her wom b” for y ears until she finally bears
Joseph. There is ev en som e point in the fact that the obstacle is a stone, for, as J.

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P. Fokkelm an has noted, stones are a m otif that accom panies Jacob in his
arduous career: he puts a stone by his head when he sleeps at Beth-El; after the
epiphany there he sets up a com m em orativ e m arker of stones; and when he
returns from Mesopotam ia, he concludes a m utual nonaggression pact with his
father-in-law by setting up on the border between them a testim onial heap of
stones. These are not really sy m bols, but there is som ething incipiently
m etaphorical about them : Jacob is a m an who sleeps on stones, speaks in stones,
wrestles with stones, contending with the hard uny ielding nature of things,
whereas, in pointed contrast, his fav ored son will m ake his way in the world as a
dealer in the truths intim ated through the film y insubstantiality of dream s.

In this particular encounter at the well, no direct speech between the stranger
and the girl is reported, only a terse sum m ary of the exchange between them .
Rachel had been nam ed by the shepherds and identified as Laban’s daughter
ev en before she actually reached the well, and for that reason she is not called
naʿarah but by her nam e, Rachel, throughout. Jacob weeps and em braces her
as his kinswom an, rev ealing his fam ilial tie to her, and she, following the
requirem ents of the ty pe-scene, then runs (the v erb “ rutz” ) to tell her father.
Laban responds by running back to greet the guest and em brace him , but our
m em ory of Laban’s glittering ey e on the golden bangles m ay m ake us wonder
how disinterested this surge of hospitality will prov e to be. If his first statem ent
to Jacob (v erse 1 4 ) is an affirm ation of kinship, the next recorded statem ent
(v erse 1 5) is an ov erture to a bargaining session and rev eals incidentally that
he has already been extracting unpaid labor from his kinsm an-guest for a
m onth.

It is only at this point that we get a piece of inform ation about Rachel that in
the case of Rebekah was announced as soon as the girl arriv ed at the well: that
the m aiden was v ery beautiful. This sm all difference in the strategy of
exposition between the two v ersions nicely illustrates how substantially the
sam e m aterials can be redeploy ed in order to m ake different points. Rebekah’s
beauty is part of her objectiv e identity in a scene that she dom inates, an item in
her pedigreed nubility along with her v irginity , and so it is appropriately
announced the m om ent she enters the scene. Rachel’s beauty , on the other
hand, is presented as a causal elem ent in Jacob’s special attachm ent to her, and
that, in turn, is fearfully entangled in the relationship of the two sisters with

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each other and in their com petition for Jacob. The crucial fact of Rachel’s
beauty , then, is withheld from us until both Rachel and Leah can be form ally
introduced (v erses 1 6 –1 7 ) as a prelude to the agreem ent on a bride-price, and so
it can be am biguously interwov en with the prerogativ es of the elder v ersus the
y ounger sister and contrastiv ely bracketed with Leah’s “tender ey es”
(presum ably all she had to recom m end her looks, or perhaps actually to be
construed as a disfigurem ent, “weak ey es”). One can clearly see that the
betrothal ty pe-scene, far from being a m echanical m eans of narrativ e
prefabrication for conv ey ing the reader from a celibate hero to a m arried one, is
handled with a flexibility that m akes it a supple instrum ent of characterization
and foreshadowing.

The next explicit occurrence of this particular ty pe-scene (Exodus 2 :1 50–2 1 )

is the m ost com pact v ersion, but the strength of the conv ention is attested to by
the fact that in six and a half swift v erses all the requisite elem ents appear.
Moses, the nativ e of Egy pt, has fled to a foreign land, Midian, where he
encounters the sev en daughters of the Midianite priest Reuel, who hav e com e
out to draw water from a well. In this case, the stranger is obliged to driv e off a
gang of hostile shepherds before drawing water and giv ing drink to the flocks, as
the conv ention requires. The girls hurry off to tell their father, a fact that in
this accelerated v ersion of the ty pe-scene is not independently stated by the
narrator but touched on by Reuel in the first words of the v iv id dialogue
between him and his daughters: “Why hav e y ou hurried [miharten ] back
today ?” (v erse 1 8). With sim ilar econom y , the welcom ing feast is not directly
reported but intim ated in Reuel’s concluding words in the dialogue: “Why did
y ou leav e the m an? Call him that we m ay eat bread” (v erse 2 0). The two
im m ediately following clauses tersely inform us that Moses took up residence
with Reuel and was giv en one of the daughters, Zipporah, as a wife.

These few v erses m ay seem so spare a treatm ent of the conv ention as to be
alm ost nondescript, but in fact this is just the kind of betrothal ty pe-scene
needed for Moses. To begin with, any presentation that would giv e m ore weight
to Zipporah than m erely one nubile daughter out of sev en would throw the
episode off balance, for her independent character and her relationship with
Moses will play no significant role in the subsequent narrativ e. (The single
enigm atic episode of the Bridegroom of Blood is scarcely an exception.) If this

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v ersion reads like a succinct sum m ary of the conv ention, that is fitting, for it
holds Moses the m an and his personal inv olv em ent at a distance, under the
perspectiv e of a certain sty lization, and throughout his story we shall be
excluded from the kind of intim acy of dom estic observ ation we get in the
narrativ es of the patriarchs or in the stories about Dav id. That effect of
sty lization is surely reinforced by introducing the form ulaic num ber of sev en
for the y oung wom en, a detail that helps giv e this narrativ e by a sophisticated
writer a deliberate, archaizing quality of folktale. At the sam e tim e, the
m anner of drawing water here is distinctiv ely appropriate for Moses. He is faced
not just with an obstacle but with enem ies whom he has to driv e off, not
surprising for the killer of the Egy ptian taskm aster, the future liberator of his
people and its m ilitary com m ander in forty y ears of desert warfare. The
narrator uses the v erb “ hoshia’,” “to sav e,” for Moses’s rescue of the sev en girls,
a lexical clue to his future role of moshia’, national redeem er. The water drawn
from the well in any case has special resonance in Moses’s career, and Reuel’s
daughters seem to stress the phy sical act of drawing up water. Here is their
entire narration of the incident to their father (v erse 1 9 ): “An Egy ptian m an
rescued us from the shepherds, and what’s m ore, he ev en drew water for us
[daloh dalah, the intensify ing repetition of the infinitiv e alongside the perfect
v erb] and watered the flock.” Moses the infant was sav ed on the water, giv en a
nam e said to m ean “drawn from the water”; Moses the leader will m iraculously
take his people through an expanse of water that will then close ov er their
enem ies; and in the wilderness he will bring forth water from a rock, but in an
outburst of im patience for which he will be condem ned. Moses’s betrothal ty pe-
scene m ay not tell us a great deal, but it tells us just what we need to know for
this protagonist at this point in the narrativ e.

What I am suggesting is that the contem porary audiences of these tales, being
perfectly fam iliar with the conv ention, took particular pleasure in seeing how
in each instance the conv ention could be, through the narrator’s art, both
faithfully followed and renewed for the specific needs of the hero under
consideration. In som e cases, m oreov er, the biblical authors, counting on their
audience’s fam iliarity with the features and function of the ty pe-scene, could
m erely allude to the ty pe-scene or present a transfigured v ersion of it. Allusion
and transfiguration are not necessarily lim ited to the later books of the Bible,

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and other ty pe-scenes, as for exam ple that of the annunciation to the barren
wife, appear sev eral tim es in integral form in post-Pentateuchal stories. But in
the instance of the betrothal ty pe-scene that we are considering, it happens that
the three full-dress occurrences are all in the Pentateuch, while later narrativ es
—I would be inclined to assum e, later in regard to date of com position as well as
in historical setting—transform or sim ply allude to the prim ary scene. Let m e
offer two brief exam ples.

The one biblical narrativ e that is in a sense entirely dev oted to the
circum stances leading to a betrothal is the Book of Ruth. Where the whole story
is a betrothal narrativ e, one segm ent could not v ery easily be a betrothal ty pe-
scene, but the author of Ruth, who is one of the m ost brilliant m asters of form al
technique am ong biblical writers, finds an ingenious way to allude to the ty pe-
scene. Ruth’s first encounter with her future husband, Boaz, is in the field where
she has gone to glean the leav ings of the harv est (Ruth 2 ). Boaz asks one of his
retainers, “Whose girl [naʿarah] is that?” and is told that she is Ruth the
Moabite, just returned from Moab with Naom i. Boaz then addresses Ruth
directly (v erses 8–9 ): “Listen, m y daughter. Do not go to glean in another field,
and don’t go away , but stick here with m y m aidens [naʿarotai]. Keep y our ey es
on the field they are reaping and go after them , for I hav e charged the lads
[neʿarim] not to touch y ou. When y ou are thirsty , go to the jars and drink from
what the lads draw.” In this elliptical v ersion, the author has rotated the
betrothal ty pe-scene 1 80 degrees on the axes of gender and geography . The
protagonist is a heroine, not a hero, and her hom eland is Moab, so the “foreign
soil” on which she m eets her future m ate near a well is Judea. (Much of the
them atic argum ent of the story as a whole is carried by the com plex
am biguities in the repeated use of the v erb “to return.” Here Ruth is said to
hav e “returned” to Bethlehem , an alien place to her, when it is only her
m other-in-law who has really returned. But we get a progressiv e sense that she
is actually com ing back to the unknown hom eland of her new destiny .) Boaz at
first erroneously identifies Ruth as a naʿarah—she is, in fact, a y oung-looking
widow. He enjoins her to follow his neʿarot, who in the traditional ty pe-scene
would com e out to draw water. Here, since it is a fem ale protagonist who has
com e to the foreign land to find a spouse, the m ale counterparts of the m aidens,
the neʿarim, take ov er the custom ary function of water-drawing. The presence

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of the conv ention m ay hav e ev en led the audience to wonder tem porarily
whether Ruth would choose a m ate from am ong the neʿarim.

In the ensuing dialogue between Ruth and Boaz, the rev ersal of conv entional
literary gender is reinforced by a pointed allusion (v erse 1 1 ) to Abraham , when
Boaz say s, “You hav e left y our father and m other and the land of y our birth and
gone to a people y ou nev er knew” (cf. Genesis 1 2 :1 —“Go forth from y our land
and y our birthplace and y our father’s house ...”). Ruth is conceiv ed by the
author as a kind of m atriarch by adoption. This particular allusion links her
with the m ov em ent from the east to Canaan at the beginning of the patriarchal
enterprise, while the whole inv ocation of the betrothal ty pe-scene suggests a
certain connection with the m atriarchs. In the case of Rebekah and Rachel,
considerable im portance is attached to ascertaining the genealogy of the
m aiden at the well. Here, in the exchange with Ruth, Boaz essentially
establishes that Ruth’s courage and her loy alty to her m other-in-law will am ply
serv e in place of a genealogy . At the end of the dialogue, he inv ites her (v erse
1 4 ) to a sim ple rural repast of roasted grain and bread dipped in v inegar—the
hospitable feast that, according to the conv ention, follows the drawing of water
and the conv ersation between the future spouses at the well. In this v ersion,
there is no running to bring the news—and, indeed, the lexicon of the Book of
Ruth m ov es from recurrent v erbs of going and returning to a cluster of words
that suggest clinging or being at rest—because Ruth is not a y oung girl
dependent on the decisions of her paternal household and also because the actual
conclusion of the betrothal m ust be postponed to the last chapter of the story ,
where it is preceded by the legal cerem ony of the refusal of the lev irate
obligation by a nearer kinsm an of Naom i. In any case, the ancient audience
m ust hav e adm ired the inv entiv eness and allusiv e econom y with which the
betrothal ty pe-scene was brought into Ruth’s story and m ust hav e taken a
certain pleasure in recognizing the them atic clues it prov ided.

In all this, of course, we m ust keep in m ind that what we are witnessing is not
m erely the technical m anipulation of a literary conv ention for the sheer
pleasure of play with the conv ention, though, as I argued at the end of the
prev ious chapter, significant play ful activ ity on the part of the Hebrew writers
should by no m eans be discounted, ev en in these sacred texts. The ty pe-scene is
not m erely a way of form ally recognizing a particular kind of narrativ e

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m om ent; it is also a m eans of attaching that m om ent to a larger pattern of
historical and theological m eaning. If Isaac and Rebekah, as the first m an and
wife born into the cov enant God has m ade with Abraham and his seed, prov ide
certain paradigm atic traits for the future historical destiny of Israel, any
association of later figures with the crucial junctures of that first story —the
betrothal, the life-threatening trial in the wilderness, the enunciation of the
blessing—will im ply som e connection of m eaning, som e further working-out of
the original cov enant. In the foregoing discussion, I hav e been stressing the
elem ents of div ergence in the v arious inv ocations of the conv ention in order to
show how supple an instrum ent of expression it can be. The fact of recurrence,
howev er, is as im portant as the presence of innov ation in the use of the ty pe-
scene; and the conv ention itself, the origins of which m ay well antecede biblical
m onotheism , has been m ade to serv e an em inently m onotheistic purpose: to
reproduce in narrativ e the recurrent rhy thm of a div inely appointed destiny in
Israelite history . In this fashion, the alignm ent of Ruth’s story with the
Pentateuchal betrothal ty pe-scene becom es an intim ation of her portentous
future as progenitrix of the div inely chosen house of Dav id.

A m uch sim pler exam ple of allusion to the betrothal ty pe-scene occurs at the
beginning of Saul’s career (1 Sam . 9 :1 1 –1 2 ). Hav ing set out with his serv ant in
search of his lost asses, he decides to consult the local seer, who turns out to be
Sam uel, the m an who will anoint him king. “They were just com ing up the
ascent to the town when they m et som e y oung wom en [neʿarot] going out to
draw water, and they said to them , ‘Is there a seer hereabouts?’” What we hav e
in this v erse, I would suggest, is the m akings of a betrothal scene: a hero at the
outset of his career in a foreign region (Saul has wandered out of his own tribal
territory ) m eeting girls who hav e com e to draw water from a well. As an
audience fam iliar with the conv ention, we m ight properly expect that he will
draw water for the girls, that they will then run hom e with the news of the
stranger’s arriv al, and so forth. Instead, this is what ensues: “They answered
and said to them , ‘There is. Look, he is straight ahead of y ou. Hurry [maher]
now, for today he has com e to town, for the people hav e a sacrifice today on the
high place.’”

The ty pe-scene has been aborted. The hero swings away from the girls at the
well to hurry after the m an of God who will launch him on his destiny of

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disaster. This is probably a deliberate strategy of foreshadowing. The sense of
com pletion im plicit in the betrothal of the hero is withheld from this
protagonist; the deflection of the anticipated ty pe-scene som ehow isolates Saul,
sounds a faintly om inous note that begins to prepare us for the story of the king
who loses his kingship, who will not be a conduit for the future rulers of Israel,
and who ends skewered on his own sword. If this interpretation seem s to exert
too m uch pressure on half a dozen words of the Hebrew text, one m ust keep in
m ind the rigorous econom y of biblical narrativ e. For the particular detail of an
encounter on unfam iliar territory with m aidens by a well would otherwise be
gratuitous. Saul could hav e easily been m ade to proceed directly to find Sam uel,
or, as happens in other biblical narrativ es, he could hav e sim ply m et an
anony m ous “m an” and asked directions of him . The fact that instead the author
chose to hav e him m eet girls by a well on foreign ground and to stress the v erb
“to hurry ” as they begin their response to the stranger is in all likelihood a clue
of m eaning.

Finally , the total suppression of a ty pe-scene m ay be a deliberate ploy of

characterization and them atic argum ent. The case of Dav id, who has rather
com plicated relations with at least three of his wiv es, m ay be an am biguous
one, for perhaps the author, working closely with observ ed historical data about
Dav id, did not feel free to im pose the sty lization of a betrothal ty pe-scene when
he knew the circum stances of Dav id’s m arriages to hav e been otherwise. Be that
as it m ay , we m ight note that the three discrim inated prem arital episodes in
the Dav id cy cle all inv olv e bloodshed, in an ascending order of m oral
questionability : the two hundred Philistines he slaughters in battle as the bride-
price for Michal; his threat to kill Nabal, Abigail’s husband, who then
conv eniently dies of shock; and his m urder of the innocent Uriah after hav ing
com m itted adultery with Bathsheba. Are these betrothals by v iolence a
deliberate counterpoint to the pastoral m otif of betrothal after the drawing of
water? Perhaps, though from this distance in tim e it is hard to be sure.

More confidently , one can see the likely point of the om itted betrothal scene in
the Sam son story (Judges 1 4 ). At the beginning of his adv entures, Sam son goes
down to Philistine Tim nah, and so we hav e a y oung hero on foreign soil, but
there is no well, no ritual of hospitality . Instead he sees a wom an he wants,

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prom ptly returns hom e, and brusquely announces to his parents that he
expects them to arrange the m arriage for him . Grudgingly , they accom pany
him back to Tim nah for the betrothal negotiations, and on the way he
encounters a lion that he tears lim b from lim b. The awesom e destruction of the
lion, and the subsequent scooping out of honey from the lion’s bleached carcass,
m ay ev en be a pointed substitution for the m ore decorous and pacific drawing of
water from the well. In any ev ent, the im petuous rush of Sam son’s career is
already com m unicated in his im patient m ov em ent from seeing a wom an to
taking her without the cerem onious m ediation of a betrothal ty pe-scene, and we
all know what calam ities the m arriage itself will engender.

The process of literary creation, as criticism has clearly recognized from the
Russian Form alists onward, is an unceasing dialectic between the necessity to
use established form s in order to be able to com m unicate coherently and the
necessity to break and rem ake those form s because they are arbitrary
restrictions and because what is m erely repeated autom atically no longer
conv ey s a m essage. “The greater the probability of a sy m bol’s occurrence in any
giv en situation,” E. H. Gom brich observ es in Art and I llusion, “the sm aller will
be its inform ation content. Where we can anticipate we need not listen.” 6
Reading any body of literature inv olv es a specialized m ode of perception in
which ev ery culture trains its m em bers from childhood. As m odern readers of
the Bible, we need to relearn som ething of this m ode of perception that was
second nature to the original audiences. Instead of relegating ev ery perceiv ed
recurrence in the text to the lim bo of duplicated sources or fixed folkloric
archety pes, we m ay begin to see that the resurgence of certain pronounced
patterns at certain narrativ e junctures was conv entionally anticipated, ev en
counted on, and that against that ground of anticipation the biblical authors set
words, m otifs, them es, personages, and actions into an elaborate dance of
significant innov ation. For m uch of art lies in the shifting aperture between the
shadowy foreim age in the anticipating m ind of the observ er and the realized
rev elatory im age in the work itself, and that is what we m ust learn to perceiv e
m ore finely in the Bible.

Let m e cast a last glance across the terrain of related scenes we hav e cov ered
to the m ethodological quandary that was our point of departure. Though I

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would hope to hav e persuaded m ost readers that there is artful purpose in the
m odifications of these shared m otifs from one occurrence to the next, there m ay
be som e lingering doubt about the general inferences I hav e drawn concerning a
form al code of biblical literature. Fiv e or six instances, as I noted earlier, m ay
seem a slender foundation on which to build a hy pothesis of a literary
conv ention. Not only would I concede the difficulty —I hav e presented ty pe-scene
as an im portant instance of how a literary understanding of the Bible works
precisely because it poses the intrinsic difficulties and m ay show how by careful
analy sis they m ight be ov ercom e. Had I taken m y exam ples from som e feature
of the form al art of biblical narrativ e tied in to m inute sty listic phenom ena (as I
shall in som e of the chapters that follow), it would hav e been easier to establish
a clear-cut case because a different m agnitude of ev idence could be cited. Thus,
the form al technique Buber and Rosenzweig first identified as Leitwortstil—the
use of reiterated key words or key roots to adv ance and refine the them atic
argum ent—can be resoundingly dem onstrated as a conscious technique because
it is so perv asiv e, and hundreds of elaborate instances could be cited. Or again,
the use of contrastiv e speech patterns to differentiate the two speakers in a
dialogue, as we shall see in the next chapter, can be shown analy tically in
dozens of instances, and so seem s safe from the charge of being a product of
m odern interpretiv e ingenuity .

The av ailable ev idence, howev er, does not alway s m ake literary
identifications so easy , and that is why I find the case of ty pe-scene especially
instructiv e. For, ev en granted the lim ited num ber of instances on which to base
a generalization, the crucial question we m ust ask ourselv es is: what are the
alternativ e m odes of explanation? To account for such a degree of repetition of
narrativ e m aterials, there are, as far as I can see, only three possible
hy potheses: it is a conv ention; or, it reflects a problem in the transm ission of a
single source, where an original story , either oral or written, is scram bled in the
course of tim e and attributed to different personages; or, it is the consequence of
allusion, one story (say , Sarah’s annunciation) being the m odel that is
pointedly cited or referred to by all the others, as Pope’s Dunciad cites the Aeneid
and Paradise Lost.

The notion of a recurrent stam m er of transm ission, which has been fav ored
by m any biblical scholars, will not stand up under analy sis for the sim ple

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reason that the v ariations in the handling of the repeated narrativ e m otifs are
nev er random , as would be the case of a tale first told about X and later
inadv ertently attributed to Y and Z. On the contrary , these v ariations, as we
hav e seen, are finely tuned to the special them atic and structural requirem ents
of each particular narrativ e and protagonist, and thus they suggest an accepted
com m on fram ework of narrativ e situation that the writer could then m odify for
the fictional purposes at hand. The hy pothesis of allusion, on the other hand, is
plainly not persuasiv e in enough cases. When one biblical story alludes to an
earlier one, as often happens, clear textual signals are giv en in the citation of
key words or phrases, som etim es ev en whole statem ents, from the antecedent
story (the line-by -line citation of the Sodom story in the grisly tale of the
concubine at Gibeah, Judges 1 9 , is the m ost extrem e instance of this procedure).
It is theoretically possible for one ty pe-scene to allude to another specific
occurrence of the sam e scene. But in m ost instances of the ty pe-scene, there is
little ev idence of such pointed citation, and so the hy pothesis of allusion as a
general explanation seem s strained. Indeed, I would suggest that no single
instance of a ty pe-scene, including the first in chronological order, is conceiv ed
to be the prim ary one. Instead, all would seem to draw on som e shared—
probably initially preliterary —Hebrew understanding about how conception
and birth, betrothal, trial, and so forth, are to be narrated. Som e of these
patterns, of course, m ay hav e been ultim ately adopted from surrounding
ancient Near Eastern literatures, but ev en if that prov ed to be the case, it
hardly m atters because what concerns us is not the etiology of the conv ention
but its fulfilled presence in the texts we read. The m ost plausible hy pothesis,
then, is that these intriguing instances of recurrent sequences of narrativ e
m otif reflect a literary conv ention that, like other narrativ e conv entions,
enabled the teller of the tale to orient his listeners, to giv e them intricate clues
as to where the tale was going, how it differed delightfully or ingeniously or
profoundly from other sim ilar tales.

The argum ent has in a sense brought us 1 80 degrees around from the
objections to the literary perspectiv e with which we began. The apprehension
about seeing the Bible in literary term s is that by so doing we unreasonably
m odernize it, wrench it out of its original context and purposes. This is a
slippery slope down which any m odern literary analy st could easily slide. But

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there is an ev en m ore coerciv e m odernizing perspectiv e in the largely unself-
critical historical and textological approaches that insist that the ancient
m aterials conform to the logical assum ptions of sequence and organization of a
later age, som ehow supposed to be tim eless and univ ersal. These com plex
workings of a seem ingly sim ple conv ention that we hav e followed—a literary
conv ention nev er really identified by scholarship as such—should, in fact,
inspire a degree of intellectual hum ility in us m oderns toward these ancient
Hebrew texts. Biblical narrativ e, for all its laconic nature, ev inces an
extraordinary degree of artistic sophistication, in m any cases play ing with the
perm utations of a literary code largely unfam iliar to us, and it is well worth the
trouble to try to recov er whatev er we can of that code. For any one interested in
the dy nam ics of literary texts, I would suggest that these biblical instances can
prov e rem arkably instructiv e because the Hebrew writers fashioned the m ost
com pact v ehicle, m arked by a rich com plexity that clothed itself in sim plicity .
I n scrutinizing this v ehicle, one is able to see—perhaps m ore readily than in
m ore texturally elaborated narrativ es—the workings of narrativ e conv ention as
such. One can grasp with greater clarity what it is that conv ention and its
m odifications can do to define narrativ e situation, character, them e, and m oral
v ision. As for the reading of the Bible itself, we m ay com e not only to appreciate
these ancient narrativ es better but, m ore im portant, to understand what they
intend to say .

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 4

Between Narration and Dialogue

HOW DO THE biblical writers create a narrativ e ev ent through their report of
it? The term “ev ent” as I shall be using it is a significant junction in the
narrativ e continuum that is different in kind from sum m ary , which is a form of
narration abundantly used in the Bible both to prov ide links between ev ents
and for the independent presentation of m aterial not deem ed suitable for
concrete rendering as discrete ev ents. To take an extrem e exam ple of sum m ary ,
one could hardly construe a genealogical list—”And Arpachshad begat Shelah
and Shelah begat Eber”—as a narrativ e ev ent because, though there is a report
of som ething that happened, the notation abstracts a single essential datum
from a lifespan of experience, and the ratio between narrating tim e and tim e
narrated is too drastically disproportionate. A proper narrativ e ev ent occurs
when the narrativ e tem po slows down enough for us to discrim inate a
particular scene; to hav e the illusion of the scene’s “presence” as it unfolds; to be
able to im agine the interaction of personages or som etim es personages and
groups, together with the freight of m otiv ations, ulterior aim s, character traits,
political, social, or religious constraints, m oral and theological m eanings, borne
by their speech, gestures, and acts. (In som e nov els, sum m ary m ay at tim es
shade into ev ent, but in the Bible the two categories tend to be distinct.) These
are the m om ents when the fictional im agination, as I hav e defined it in chapter
2 , is in full operation, howev er m uch a particular ev ent m ay be based on an
actual historical occurrence.

The characteristic presentation of such narrativ e ev ents in the Bible is

notably different from that of the Greek epics and rom ances and of m uch later
Western narrativ e literature. It is im portant to keep clearly in m ind the
peculiarity of the Hebrew m ode of presentation because that will help us learn
where to look for its rev elations of m eaning, nuanced and oblique as well as
em phatic and ov ert. The story of Dav id’s encounter with Ahim elech at the
sanctuary of Nob (1 Sam uel 2 1 ) is a fairly representativ e biblical rendering of
an ev ent. Dav id, warned by Jonathan of Saul’s m urderous intentions toward
him , has fled unaccom panied to Nob, without prov isions or weapons.

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 2 . And David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest, and Ahimelech trembled
to meet David and said to him : “Why are y ou alone, and no one is with
y ou?” 3 . And Dav id said to Ahim elech the priest: “The king has charged
m e with a m ission, and said to m e, ‘Let no one know a thing of the m ission
on which I am sending y ou and with which I charge y ou.’ And the lads I
hav e directed to such and such a place. 4 . And now, what do y ou hav e at
hand, fiv e loav es of bread? Giv e them to m e, or whatev er there is.” 5. And
the priest answered Dav id and said, “I hav e no com m on bread at hand,
solely consecrated bread, if only the lads hav e kept them selv es from
wom en.” 6 . And Dav id answered the priest and said to him , “Why ,
wom en are taboo to us as in tim es gone by when I sallied forth, and the
lads’ gear was consecrated, ev en if it was a com m on journey , and how
m uch m ore so now the gear should be consecrated.” 7 . And the priest gave
him what was consecrated, for there was no bread there except the Bread of
the Presence which had been removed from before the LORD to be replaced
with warm bread as soon as it was taken away. 8. And there a man of Saul’s
servants that day was detained before the LORD, and his name was Doeg
the Edomite, chief of the herdsmen of Saul. 9 . And Dav id said to Ahim elech,
“Don’t y ou hav e here at hand a spear or a sword? For neither m y sword
nor m y gear hav e I taken with m e, for the king’s m ission was urgent.” 1 0.
And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine whom y ou struck
down in the Valley of the Terebinth, here it is, wrapped in a cloak behind
the ephod. If this y ou would take for y ourself, take it, for there is none
other but it hereabouts.” And Dav id said, “There’s none like it. Giv e it to
m e.” 1 1 . And David rose on that day and fled from Saul, and he came to
Achish king of Gath.

I hav e italicized ev ery thing in the episode that can be construed as narration,
excluding the strictly form ulaic introductions of speech (“and he said,” “and he
answered and he said”) that, by the fixed conv ention of biblical literature, are
required to indicate statem ent and response in dialogue. What this
ty pographical distinction should m ake im m ediately apparent in the passage is
the highly subsidiary role of narration in com parison to direct speech by the
characters. The episode is fram ed by an introductory half-v erse that tersely

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reports Dav id’s flight to Nob and Ahim elech’s reception of him , and by a brief
concluding v erse that tells how Dav id, now arm ed and prov isioned, continues
his flight to the Philistine city of Gath. The ancient Hebrew audience would
hav e im m ediately recognized this last v erse as the end of the episode because it
inv okes the form ula of rising up and going off to a different place, which is one of
the prev alent biblical conv entions for m arking the end of a narrativ e segm ent. 1

Within the fram e set by these two v erses (1 Sam . 2 1 :2 and 1 1 ), the flow of
dialogue is interrupted just once, in v erses 7 –8. It should be noted that the first
of these two v erses repeats alm ost v erbatim Ahim elech’s statem ent in v erse 5
about the absence in the sanctuary of any bread except the consecrated loav es,
only adding an explanatory com m ent about the loav es in question hav ing been
replaced by fresh shewbread, so we will understand that Dav id is not taking
bread actually needed for cultic purposes. In any case, v erse 7 illustrates a
general trait of biblical narrativ e: the prim acy of dialogue is so pronounced that
m any pieces of third-person narration prov e on inspection to be dialogue-bound,
v erbally m irroring elem ents of dialogue that precede them or that they
introduce. Narration is thus often relegated to the role of confirm ing assertions
m ade in dialogue—occasionally , as here, with an explanatory gloss.

In regard to the proportions of the narrativ e, third-person narration is

frequently only a bridge between m uch larger units of direct speech. In regard
to the perspectiv e of the narrativ e, the third-person restatem ent of what has
been said in dialogue directs our attention back to the speakers, to the em phases
they choose, the way s their statem ents m ay div erge from the narrator’s
authoritativ e report of what occurs. (In the next chapter, we shall look at two
especially instructiv e instances of such div ergence, the story of Joseph and
Potiphar’s wife and the account of Solom on’s succession to the throne through
the interv ention of Bathsheba and Nathan.) The biblical writers, in other
words, are often less concerned with actions in them selv es than with how
indiv idual character responds to actions or produces them ; and direct speech is
m ade the chief instrum ent for rev ealing the v aried and at tim es nuanced
relations of the personages to the actions in which they are im plicated.

If v erse 7 of our passage is a dialogue-bound bridge between two m om ents in

the dram atic exchange between Dav id and Ahim elech, com pleting the question

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of food and so m ov ing us on to the question of a weapon, v erse 8, which reports
the presence in the sanctuary of an eav esdropper, Doeg, is intended as a
deliberate intrusion upon the dialogue. Doeg is not the subject here of any
proper narrated action—indeed, in the Hebrew no v erb is attached to him , for
the v erb “to be” has no present or participial form , and the report of Doeg’s
being in the sanctuary is cast in the present in what would be the equiv alent of
a long noun phrase. In this way , attention is focused on the m an rather than on
any thing he m ight hav e done. The facts that he is identified as an official of
Saul’s and that he is an Edom ite of course do not augur well for the part he will
play in the story as it continues to unfold.

We were not told of Doeg’s presence in the sanctuary when we first heard of
Dav id’s arriv al there. Biblical narrativ e often withholds pieces of exposition
until the m om ent in the story when they are im m ediately relev ant, but what is
the im m ediate relev ance here? There is nothing in the episode itself that m akes
it clear why Doeg should be m entioned at this point, so we experience this
interruption of the dialogue precisely as an interruption, perhaps m erely
puzzling, perhaps a bit om inous. The inference of som ething om inous is
strengthened by what directly follows this m ention of Doeg: Dav id’s request for
a weapon. The giv ing of Goliath’s sword to Dav id will be the m ost dam aging
item in Doeg’s subsequent denunciation of Ahim elech to Saul (1 Sam . 2 2 :1 0),
which, in addition to the prov ision of food, includes a third elem ent that would
appear to be the inform er’s own inv ention in order to com pound the priest’s
guilt—an alleged inquiry of the oracle by Dav id, which could hav e been done
only through Ahim elech. Doeg’s denunciation will trigger a general m assacre of
the priests of Nob, with the Edom ite acting as executioner as well as inform er, so
his appearance in our passage just before a discussion of swords and spears is also
an apt piece of foreshadowing. (In all this, the writer seem s to be play ing on the
v erbal root, d’g, reflected in the Edom ite’s nam e, which m eans “worry .”) In any
case, the way the report of Doeg in the sanctuary works in tension with its
context of dialogue illustrates how narration in the biblical story is finally
oriented toward dialogue.

By and large, the biblical writers prefer to av oid indirect speech. In the
passage we hav e been considering, for exam ple, ev en Saul’s supposed orders to
Dav id (1 Sam . 2 1 :3 ) are not presented in sum m ary or as indirect speech but as

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an actual quotation im bedded in Dav id’s dialogue. The rule of thum b is that
when speech is inv olv ed in a narrativ e ev ent, it is presented as direct speech. If,
for exam ple, the narrator reports that “Dav id was sm itten with rem orse
because he had cut off the skirt of the cloak that was Saul’s,” he does not
continue, as a narrator in another tradition m ight, “And he told his m en, the
LORD forbid that he should hav e done this thing to his m aster, the LORD’s
anointed, to raise his hand against him , for he was the LORD’s anointed.”
Instead, the narrator switches to direct discourse. “The LORD forbid m e that I
should hav e done this thing to m y m aster, God’s anointed, to reach out m y
hand against him , for he is the LORD’s anointed” (1 Sam . 2 4 :5–6 ). The
difference between the two form s of presentation is not triv ial, for the v ersion
the Bible actually uses has the effect of bringing the speech-act into the
foreground, m aking us keenly conscious of Dav id as a figure addressing his m en
and using language both to produce a certain effect on them and to define his
relation to Saul. Indeed, though I hav e been careful in m y hy pothetical v ersion
in indirect speech to alter neither the term s of the statem ent nor their order,
ev en the sy ntax of Dav id’s declaration is shaped by the pressures of the
dram atic m om ent. He begins with a v ow, “The LORD forbid m e that I should
hav e done this thing,” and then goes on to an additiv e series that is determ ined
by his groping toward a cum ulativ e effect, a clim actic em phasis, quite unlike
norm ativ e prose sy ntax for biblical narrativ e: “to m y m aster, the LORD’s
anointed, to reach out m y hand against him , for he is the LORD’s anointed.” The
form of the statem ent m akes us feel the urgent presence of Dav id say ing: I am
the king’s v assal, he is m y m aster; he is God’s anointed m onarch, the sanctity of
whose election is an awesom e thing to m e; I will not do this thing that y ou and I
see as an im m inent possibility here and now; I will not raise this hand that y ou
see gripping the sword-hilt against the LORD’s anointed. The adv antage gained
by presenting Dav id’s address in direct speech is not only im m ediacy but also a
certain com plicating am biguity . An av owal by Dav id to his m en reported in the
third person would take on som e of the authoritativ eness of the reliable
narrator; as things are actually presented, we find ourselv es confronted with
Dav id as he m akes his public statem ent, and, as elsewhere, we are led to ponder
the different possible connections between his spoken words and his actual
feelings or intentions.

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 The biblical preference for direct discourse is so pronounced that thought is
alm ost inv ariably rendered as actual speech, that is, as quoted m onologue.
Attitude, of course—lov e, hate, fear, jealousy , and so forth—can be m erely
reported in a single appropriate v erb because what is inv olv ed is in effect a
sum m ary of interior experience rather than a narrativ e realization of it. But
when an actual process of contem plating specific possibilities, sorting out
feelings, weighing alternativ es, m aking resolutions, is a m om ent in the
narrativ e ev ent, it is reported as direct discourse. Here, for exam ple, is the
account of how Dav id ponders the danger to which he is exposed because of
Saul’s persistently erratic behav ior toward him (1 Sam . 2 7 :1 ): “And Dav id said
in his heart, ‘Now, I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing
better for m e than to m ake certain I get away to Philistine country . Then Saul
will despair of seeking m e through all the territory of Israel and I shall get away
from him .’” The form al sim ilarity between uttered speech and unspoken
thought is reinforced by the introductory form ula, “And Dav id said in his
heart,” and in m any other instances, the v erb “to say ” without any qualifier
m eans to think, context alone instructing us as to whether we are encountering
interior speech or dialogue.

It is not easy to determ ine in each instance why thought should be reported as
speech. One is tem pted to conclude that the biblical writers did not distinguish
sharply between the two in their assum ptions about how the m ind relates to
reality . Perhaps, with their strong sense of the prim acy of language in the
created order of things, they tended to feel that thought was not fully itself until
it was articulated as speech. In any case, the repeated translation of thought
into speech allows for a certain clarify ing sty lization, a dram atic v iv idness and
sy m m etry of effect. These characteristics are observ able on a m odest scale ev en
in the brief instance of Dav id contem plating flight to Philistia. He begins his
interior m onologue with a quasi-tem poral, quasi-attitudinal indicator of
em phasis, ʿatah (King Jam es Version, “now,” but probably m ore with the sense
of “now, look here” or “in that case”), which focuses his m om ent of resolution,
places it contrastiv ely at the end of that sequence of tim e in which he has been
on the run from Saul, nearly killed by Saul, and precariously reconciled twice
with the m anic king. The introductory ʿatah of Dav id’s interior m onologue
dram atically announces the narrativ e turning point that sends Dav id away

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from Saul, whom he will nev er see again, and that sends Saul to his grim
m eeting with the ghost of Sam uel, and then to his death. Dav id’s m onologue
also exhibits the them atic lucidity of sy m m etrically articulated speech. His
statem ent begins with the prospect of death at the hands of Saul and concludes
with the idea of escape from those sam e hands. The v erb “get away from ,”
himmalet, becom es the gov erning key word of this sm all unit, loom ing in the
m iddle of Dav id’s m onologue through the Hebrew rhetorical dev ice of em phatic
statem ent of the infinitiv e before the conjugated v erb (himmalet ʾimmalet,
literally , “get away will I get away ”), and then concluding the m onologue, “I
shall get away .” A neat antithesis, m oreov er, is set up in the speech between
Philistine country and Israelite territory , underscoring the painful and perhaps
am biguous predicam ent of the future king of Israel forced to seek refuge am ong
his people’s hated enem ies.

The bias of sty lization in the biblical com m itm ent to dialogue before all else is
perhaps m ost instructiv ely rev ealed by an extrem e instance: the report of
inquiry of an oracle as dialogue. Here is a characteristic exam ple (2 Sam . 2 :1 ):
“And it happened afterward that Dav id inquired of the LORD, say ing, ‘Shall I go
up into one of the towns of Judah?’ And the LORD said to him , ‘Go up.’ And
Dav id said, ‘Where shall I go up?’ And He said, ‘To Hebron.’” Now, it is not clear
what particular m ethod of consulting an oracle Dav id used, but the com m on
ones—casting dice-like stones, div ining through the gem s set in the priestly
breastplate—were not v erbal, and since Dav id is nowhere presented as a seer
v ouchsafed direct com m unication from God, there is no reason to assum e that
an actual dialogue took place as it seem s to be reported. (We m ight recall that
ev en when God wants to conv ey to Dav id the div ine judgm ent that not he but
his son will build God a house in Jerusalem , He does not address Dav id directly
but conv ey s His detailed m essage through Nathan the prophet in a dream -
v ision.) In the case of Dav id’s inquiry of the oracle, then, the writer alm ost
certainly counted on his audience’s understanding that God did not in fact
respond to Dav id in this m anner, that the inquiry itself was m ade not through
speech but through som e m anipulation of cultic objects, and that what is
reported is by no m eans the form but rather the gist of the inquiry . This
procedure v iolates our own general sense of how m im esis should operate: why
render an action in term s that are patently not the term s of the action itself?

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 The answer, I think, m ust be sought in what I hav e called the bias of
sty lization in the Bible’s narration-through-dialogue. The m echanical agency of
consulting the oracle is in the ey es of the writer a triv ial m atter and not worthy
of narrativ e representation. What is im portant to him is hum an will confronted
with alternativ es that it m ay choose on its own or subm it to div ine
determ ination. Articulated language prov ides the indispensable m odel for
defining this rhy thm of political or historical alternativ es, question and
response, creaturely uncertainty ov er against the Creator’s interm ittently
rev ealed design, because in the biblical v iew words underlie reality . With words
God called the world into being; the capacity for using language from the start
set m an apart from the other creatures; in words each person rev eals his
distinctiv e nature, his willingness to enter into binding com pacts with m en and
God, his ability to control others, to deceiv e them , to feel for them , and to
respond to them . Spoken language is the substratum of ev ery thing hum an and
div ine that transpires in the Bible, and the Hebrew tendency to transpose what
is prev erbal or nonv erbal into speech is finally a technique for getting at the
essence of things, for obtruding their substratum .

In a m ode of narration so dom inated by speech, v isual elem ents will

necessarily be sparsely represented. And ev en in the exceptional cases when a
scene is conceiv ed v isually , the writer m ay contriv e to report what is seen
through what is spoken. Modern com m entators, for exam ple, hav e adm ired the
m om ent when Dav id sits at the gates of the city , awaiting the outcom e of the
battle against Absalom ’s forces (2 Sam uel 1 8), and sees first one runner, then a
second ov ertaking the first, m ov ing toward him across the plain with the fateful
news. What needs to be observ ed, though, is that this rem arkable dram atic
“long shot” is conv ey ed to us in dialogue, through two exchanges between Dav id
and the keen-sighted lookout.

Let us return briefly to the encounter between Dav id and Ahim elech at the
Nob sanctuary in order to see how this general principle of getting at the
essence, obtruding the substratum , is m anifested in the rendering of a
narrativ e ev ent as dialogue. To begin with, it is worth underlining the obv ious:
that nothing is allowed to enter the scene that will detract attention from the
dialogue itself. We are not inform ed what Dav id and Ahim elech are wearing or
what they look like; and we are not ev en giv en guidance as to where or behind

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what Doeg is lurking so that he can witness the exchange between Dav id and
Ahim elech without, perhaps, being noticed by them . (Later, Dav id will claim to
hav e been aware of Doeg’s presence in the sanctuary , but why then did he leav e
this potential inform er untouched?) The biblical scene, in other words, is
conceiv ed alm ost entirely as v erbal intercourse, with the assum ption that what
is significant about a character, at least for a particular narrativ e juncture, can
be m anifested alm ost entirely in the character’s speech.

I would stress that the speech reported, though dram atically conv incing, is
not m eant to be altogether naturalistic. We of course hav e no way of knowing
what ordinary spoken Hebrew was like around the turn of the first m illennium
BCE, but there is som e internal ev idence here—and a good deal m ore
throughout biblical dialogue—that the “bias of sty lization” affects the words
assigned to the speakers. The sy m ptom atic instance in our passage is Dav id’s
telling Ahim elech that he has set a rendezv ous with his m en “at such and such
a place.” A m ore literally m im etic writer would hav e inv ented a plausible
place-nam e for the rendezv ous—and we m ay note that later in the dialogue
Ahim elech m entions a specific place-nam e, the Valley of the Terebinth, as the
site of Goliath’s defeat. If it were the writer’s intention to indicate that Dav id is
concealing the location of the supposed rendezv ous from Ahim elech, he could
hav e rendered this naturalistically as “at a place that I told them .” To write
instead “at such and such a place” is to weav e into the texture of Dav id’s speech,
with no form al indication of transition, a clear signal of authorial abstraction.
What the writer seem s to hav e in m ind is Dav id’s m anifest desire to fabricate a
story that will allay Ahim elech’s suspicions and enable him to get what he
wants from the priest. For this purpose, the sty lized unspecificity of “such and
such”—that is, Location X, which I, Dav id, hav e inv ented to pad out m y story —
serv es better than a m im etically faithful place-nam e.

Sty lization, in any case, is present from the v ery beginning of the dialogue in
Ahim elech’s first words to Dav id. Narration and especially dialogue in the Bible
shift into the form al sy m m etry of near-v erse and actual v erse m ore often than
has been generally noticed by readers and ev en by scholarly specialists.
Ahim elech’s initial question to Dav id is cast in a perfectly scannable line of
Hebrew v erse, three beats in each v erset, with the requisite sem antic

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parallelism of biblical poetry in its paradigm atic form : “Why are y ou alone, /
and no one is with y ou?” Perhaps the form ality of this opening was deem ed
appropriate for Ahim elech because it rev eals him at once as a m an speaking ex
cathedra, out of a sense of the weight and dignity of his priestly authority . At
the sam e tim e, the repetition, norm ativ e for v erse, m ay suggest in the flow of
prose dialogue a certain slowness or obtuseness on the part of Ahim elech, the
consequences of which will be lethal for him . The priest exhibits a definite
tendency to alm ost leisurely restatem ent of the obv ious: “I hav e no com m on
bread at hand, solely consecrated bread,” and toward the end of the dialogue, “If
this y ou would take for y ourself, take it, for there is none other but it
hereabouts.” Dav id’s speech, on the other hand, has som ething of the
breathlessness and lack of shape of words spoken in a m om ent of urgency . The
repetitiv e elem ents on his side of the dialogue suggest a speaker groping for an
object, and do not reflect the form al sy m m etry of v erse: “And now, what do y ou
hav e at hand, fiv e loav es of bread? Giv e them to m e, or whatev er there is.”
That pattern of dram atically plausible repetition is still m ore ev ident as Dav id
edges toward the crucial request for a weapon: “Don’t y ou hav e here at hand a
spear or a sword? For neither m y sword nor m y gear hav e I taken with m e, for
the king’s m ission was urgent.” Dav id’s last words in the dialogue—only four in
num ber in the Hebrew—do m ov e from this sort of sy ntactic sprawl to succinct
sy m m etry : “There’s none like it; giv e it to m e.” But the statem ent is too short to
be scannable as a line of v erse like Ahim elech’s at the beginning. What it
perfectly cry stallizes at the end of the scene are the qualities of im patience and
driv ing insistence that hav e characterized Dav id’s words throughout the
encounter, joined now as he departs from Nob with a note of iron resolution.

The dialogue, then, oscillating between the poles of form al sty lization and
dram atic m im esis, rev eals indiv idual character caught in the fullness of
portentous action. The whole episode, of course, could hav e been reported as
narrativ e sum m ary in a single v erse, but by rendering it through dialogue as a
proper narrativ e ev ent, the writer is able to trace the fateful intersection of two
disparate hum an ty pes: the y oung Dav id, cunning for the purposes of his own
surv iv al, tense with the consciousness of the dangers pursuing him , m ore
im perious than entreating, prepared if necessary to be ruthless; and the aging
priest (we learn later that he already has a grown son), baffled by this

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unexpected irruption into the sanctuary , perhaps a little slow and form al,
hardly able to glim pse the terrible destiny that is about to ov ertake him .

It is biblical narrativ e that prov ides us the first great anticipation of

nov elistic dialogue, in which the words spoken by the personages register the
subtle interplay between them and express the nature of their indiv idual
character. Speech is thus conceiv ed as the arena of com plex social,
psy chological, and som etim es political negotiation. All this constitutes an
instructiv e contrast to the Hom eric poem s, in which the characters deliv er
speeches—often quite grand and m ov ing speeches—that ty pically run on for
dozens of lines, but without the interchange of genuine dialogue and with a
m ore lim ited delineation of indiv idual traits.

A general biblical principle for differentiating character in dialogue is at work

through the biblical use of dialogue. Where literary conv ention requires writers
to m ake all their characters follow in their speech the decorum of norm ativ e
literary Hebrew, allowing only the m ost fragm entary and oblique indications of
a personal language, of indiv idual tics and linguistic peculiarities,
differentiation is brought out chiefly through contrast. The technique of
contrastiv e dialogue is all the m ore feasible because the fixed practice of biblical
narrativ e, with only a few rather m arginal exceptions, lim its scenes to two
characters at a tim e—or som etim es, to the exchange between one character and
a group speaking in a single v oice as a collectiv e interlocutor. The
characterizing lineam ents of Dav id’s use of language becom e m ore ev ident
because they are juxtaposed with Ahim elech’s rather different m anner of
speech, and v ice v ersa.

Again and again the ancient Hebrew writers exploit the rev elatory
possibilities of this technique of contrastiv e dialogue. We m ay note a few
fam iliar exam ples: Esau’s inarticulate outbursts ov er against Jacob’s calculated
legalism s in the selling of the birthright (Gen. 2 5); Joseph’s long-winded
statem ent of m orally aghast refusal ov er against the two-word sexual bluntness
of Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 3 9 ); Saul’s choked cry after Dav id’s im passioned speech
outside the cav e at Ein Gedi (1 Sam . 2 4 ). As the last two instances m ay suggest,
one of the m ost com m on dev ices of contrastiv e dialogue is to juxtapose som e
form of v ery brief statem ent with som e form of v erbosity . It will be seen that no

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particular them atic m eaning is attached to either length or brev ity :
ev ery thing depends on the two characters in question, the way their statem ents
are articulated, the situation in which they encounter each other. The brev ity
of the sexual proposition on the part of Potiphar’s wife is a brilliant sty lization—
for as Thom as Mann was to observ e at great length, she must hav e said m ore
than that!—of the naked lust that im pels her, and perhaps also of the
perem ptory tone she feels she can assum e toward her Hebrew slav e. The brev ity
of Saul’s “Is this y our v oice, m y son, Dav id?” reflects a character ov erwhelm ed
with feeling, forced to pull up short in the m idst of his m ad pursuit and to
return to the point of origin of his bond with Dav id.

Let m e m ention briefly four other exam ples of the technique of contrastiv e
dialogue in order to indicate its range of expressiv e possibilities. In 1 Kings 1 8,
Elijah, who has been pursued by Ahab, is m et on the road by Obadiah, Ahab’s
m ajordom o, who has secretly sav ed a hundred prophets of the LORD from
Jezebel’s wrath. Elijah bids Obadiah to tell the king that he is there. The
m ajordom o reacts with a relativ ely lengthy speech (1 Kings 1 8:9 –1 4 ) full of
repetitions in which his words seem to stum ble all ov er each other as he
expresses his horror at the risk inv olv ed for him in announcing to the king the
presence of his m ortal enem y Elijah. Elijah’s response to all this terrified v erbal
com m otion is a succinct statem ent of inexorable purpose: “By the LORD of Hosts
whom I hav e serv ed, today I will appear before him ” (1 Kings 1 8:1 5). The
contrastiv e form of the dialogue, which has a certain elem ent of grim com edy ,
dram atizes the profound difference in character between the two speakers: the
one, a God-fearing person who has taken certain chances because of his
conscience but who is, after all, an ordinary m an with understandable hum an
fears and hesitations; the other, a fiercely uncom prom ising agent of God’s
purpose, im pelled by the im perativ e sense of his own prophetic authority .

The dialogue in the story of Am non and Tam ar (2 Sam uel 1 3 ) looks like a
conscious allusion to the technique, and also to the language, used in the episode
of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Am non addresses to his half-sister exactly the
sam e words with which Potiphar’s wife accosts Joseph—“lie with m e”—adding to
them only one word, the them atically loaded “sister” (2 Sam . 1 3 :1 1 ). She
responds with an elaborate protestation, like Joseph before her; in Tam ar’s case,
the relativ ely lengthy reply is a kind of panicked catalogue of reasons for

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Am non to desist, a desperate attem pt at persuasion. No further dialogue is
assigned to Am non; he now speaks only through action—the rape. Then, after he
has taken her by force, he addresses to her just two final words: qumi lekhi, “Get
out!” (2 Sam . 1 3 :1 5).

Two opposite instances in which length and brev ity are correlated with
rhetorical calculation and directness respectiv ely occur in the fram e-story of
Job (Job 1 –2 ) and in the episode of the contradictory counsels giv en to Absalom
(2 Sam uel 1 7 ). God’s first words in Job, addressed to the Adv ersary , are alm ost
brusque—“From where do y ou com e?” (Job 1 :7 )—and He em ploy s dev ices of
sy m m etrical repetition only when He is echoing v erbatim the narrator’s initial
characterization of Job. The Adv ersary , on the other hand, in his relativ ely
longer speeches, shows a fondness for v erse-insets, clev er citation of folk-say ings,
argum entativ e positioning of sy ntactical m em bers for the m ost persuasiv e
effect. In short, as befits a prosecuting attorney , he is a m aster of conscious
rhetoric, alongside of whom God seem s plainspoken.

In the story of Absalom ’s rebellion, Ahitophel’s m ilitarily correct adv ice takes
about forty words in the Hebrew. It consists m ainly of a chain of jussiv e v erbs
—“let m e pick ... m en ... let m e rise and pursue Dav id tonight” (2 Sam . 1 7 :1 )—
which perfectly expresses both the content and the m ood of Ahitophel’s counsel.
There is not a m om ent to lose, the only course is to hit Dav id hard before he can
regroup his forces, and the statem ent itself has no tim e for fancy rhetorical
m aneuv ers. By contrast, Hushai’s counsel is three and a half tim es as long, and
m akes itself felt at v irtually ev ery point as a brilliant rhetorical contriv ance,
abounding in persuasiv e sim iles (in biblical narrativ e it is alm ost alway s the
characters, not the narrator, who introduce figurativ e language), som e of
which rev erberate with earlier m om ents in the Dav id story ; and Absalom ’s
response to the m ilitary possibilities that Hushai calls forth is nicely controlled
from phrase to phrase by the speaker’s subtle choice of specific term s . 2 This
cunning rhetoric will destroy Absalom , so the contrastiv e dialogue to begin with
juxtaposes a plainspoken Ahitophel, succinctly telling the truth, with a dev ious
Hushai. But rhetoric is not necessarily ev il in the Bible, and the contrastiv e
technique takes a dialectical turn here, for Absalom is, after all, a usurper, and
Hushai, brav ely loy al to Dav id, is using his ability to deceiv e through words in

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order to restore the rightful king to his throne.

From all I hav e said about the prim acy of dialogue, sev eral general rules
suggest them selv es for the alert reading of biblical narrativ e. In any giv en
narrativ e ev ent, and especially at the beginning of any new story , the point at
which dialogue first em erges will be worthy of special attention, and in m ost
instances, the initial words spoken by a personage will be rev elatory , perhaps
m ore in m anner than in m atter, constituting an im portant m om ent in the
exposition of character. The obv erse of this necessity to watch for the when and
how of the beginning of dialogue is equally interesting: in a narrativ e tradition
where dialogue is preponderant, it m ay often prov e instructiv e to ask why the
writer has decided to use narration instead of dialogue for a particular block of
m aterial or ev en for a particular brief m om ent in a scene. A quick rev iew of the
m ain functions serv ed by narration in the Bible will giv e us a better sense of the
special rhy thm with which the Hebrew writers tell their tales: beginning with
narration, they m ov e into dialogue, drawing back m om entarily or at length to
narrate again, but alway s centering on the sharply salient v erbal intercourse of
the characters, who act upon one another, discov er them selv es, affirm or expose
their relation to God, through the force of language.

Perhaps the m ost general use to which narration is put is to prov ide a
chronicle—as a rule, a sum m arizing ov erv iew rather than a scenic
representation—of public ev ents. Extended sections of the Books of Kings, for
exam ple, are dev oted to m ore or less uninterrupted narration because they are
intended to chronicle wars and political intrigues, national cultic trespasses and
their supposed historical consequences. The fictional im agination, which creates
indiv idualized personages grappling with one another and with circum stances
to realize their destinies, is dilute in these passages.

More interesting are the occasions when a relativ ely brief segm ent of
chronicle is m ade a significant com positional elem ent in the historicized fiction.
Chapters 1 0 and 1 1 of 2 Sam uel prov ide an instructiv e instance of such
contrastiv e com position. Chapter 1 0 is an account of Israel’s war with the
Am m onites and their Aram ean allies. In the first half of the chapter, which
begins with the diplom atic incident that triggered the hostilities and ends with
Joab’s exhortation to the Israelite troops before the first battle, narration is

1 00
interspersed with dialogue. The second half of the chapter, which cov ers Joab’s
initial v ictory , his return to Jerusalem , the political-m ilitary m aneuv ers of the
eastern alliance against Israel, and a successful Israelite expedition into the
territory of its assem bled enem ies, is uninterrupted narration. The
disproportion in this second half of the chapter between narrated tim e and
narrating tim e is striking: the com plicated actions of m any m onths are
reported in a few v erses, allowing for no proper narrativ e ev ents. A battle won,
for exam ple, is conv ey ed through the following generalized sum m ary : “And
Joab adv anced, and the troops who were with him , to battle against the
Aram eans, and they fled before him ” (2 Sam . 1 0:1 3 ).

But what im m ediately follows this m ilitary chronicle in Chapter 1 0 is the

story of Dav id and Bathsheba in Chapter 1 1 . That m em orable tale, dense with
m oral and psy chological m eanings and possibilities of m eaning, begins by
inform ing us of the siege Joab has laid against the Am m onite capital of Rabbah.
The opening v erse of 2 Sam uel 1 1 —“And it happened at the turn of the y ear, the
tim e when the kings sally forth ...”—is a brilliant transitional dev ice. It firm ly
ties in the story of Dav id as adulterer and m urderer with the large national-
historical perspectiv e of the preceding chronicle. As the narrativ e v iewpoint
m ov es into a close-up on Dav id, we are rem inded (as sev eral com m entators on
this chapter hav e aptly noted) that while the king of Israel is hom e enjoy ing his
siesta and then represented peeping at a bathing beauty on a neighboring roof,
the fighting m en of Israel—who in the past, including the last cam paign just
reported in Chapter 1 0, were com m anded personally by their m onarch—are out
on the dusty plains of Am m on, risking their liv es to protect the national
interest.

In the first few v erses of Chapter 1 1 , narration still predom inates, though it is
a narration m ore closely focused on particular actions: Dav id pacing up and
down on his roof balcony , Bathsheba bathing on hers, Dav id sending go-
betweens first to find out about this lov ely wom an and then to bring her to his
bed. At this point, in a characteristic biblical tim e-jum p through sum m ary
from an action to its significant consequence, we m ov e from Dav id’s ly ing with
Bathsheba to her pregnancy . From this juncture—the end of v erse 6 , when
Bathsheba sends the king a two-word m essage, “I’m pregnant”—to the
conclusion of the story , narration-through-dialogue will predom inate. This

1 01
m ain part of the story is in fact one of the richest and m ost intricate exam ples in
the Bible of how am biguities are set up by what is said and left unsaid in
dialogue, of how characters rev eal them selv es through what they repeat,
report, or distort of the speech of others. The preceding chapter of sum m arizing
narration m ay be in part a kind of textural contrast to all this, a change in
narrativ e pace before this im m ensely com plex rendering through direct
discourse of a sequence of ev ents from which will flow all the subsequent
disasters that befall Dav id’s court. More significantly , howev er, the long v iew of
the chronicle in Chapter 1 0 prov ides a context of m eaning for the story that
follows: the king’s intim ate m oral biography , we are rem inded from the outset,
cannot be dev oid of political and historical ram ifications.

The considerations that determ ine the use of narration on a sm aller scale, in
the m idst of a presentation of narrativ e ev ents dom inated by dialogue, are m ore
v aried. It would be tedious to attem pt an exhaustiv e catalogue of these
considerations, but it m ay help us to understand the dy nam ics of biblical
narrativ e m ore clearly if we note that there are three general kinds of function
serv ed by the narration that is wov en through or around dialogue. These are:
the conv ey ing of actions essential to the unfolding of the plot (other sorts of
action are hardly ev er reported) that could not be easily or adequately
indicated in dialogue; the com m unication of data ancillary to the plot, often not
strictly part of it because actions are not inv olv ed (data, in other words,
essentially expository in nature); the v erbatim m irroring, confirm ing,
subv erting, or focusing in narration of statem ents m ade in direct discourse by
the characters (what I hav e referred to as dialogue-bound narration). Som e
brief exam ples will show how these different possibilities actually work in the
text. I shall begin with dialogue-bound narration because we hav e already had
occasion to observ e one instance of it in the episode at the Nob sanctuary .

When there is no div ergence between a statem ent as it occurs in narration

and as it recurs in dialogue, or v ice v ersa, the repetition generally has the effect
of giv ing a weight of em phasis to the specific term s that the speaker chooses for
his speech. When Asahel, Joab’s y ounger brother whose fleetness will bring
about his ruin, goes after the experienced warrior Abner on the battlefield (2
Sam . 2 :1 9 –2 1 ), the narrator reports, “He swerv ed not to the right or left in
going after Abner.” A m om ent later, the fleeing Abner recognizes Asahel and

1 02
calls out, “Swerv e y ou to y our right or y our left and seize for y ourself one of the
lads.” Now, the fact of pursuit is what I hav e called an action essential to the
plot and probably could not hav e been conv ey ed in dialogue without som e
awkwardness. The entire clause, howev er, about swerv ing neither right nor left
is not, by the standard of biblical narrativ e econom y , strictly necessary ; and I
would contend that it is there because it is bound to the bit of dialogue that
im m ediately follows. That is, the v erbal anticipation in narration of Abner’s
statem ent m akes us feel the full dram atic urgency of his plea to the rash Asahel
in the specific term s he has chosen for it. Here y ou are—his weighted words
im ply —in inexorable pursuit; y ou will hav e abundant opportunity for glory if
y ou will just turn to one side or the other; but if y ou insist on following this
terrible beeline after m e, it will lead y ou only to death. The com m on idiom of
swerv ing neither right nor left is thus conv erted through the repetition into a
concrete im age of the geom etry of surv iv al.

Ev en m ore frequently , dialogue-bound narration sets up a sm all but

significant dissonance between the objectiv e report and the term s in which the
character restates the facts. When Naboth is stoned to death through Jezebel’s
instigation (1 Kings 2 1 :1 3 –1 5), the essential narrativ e facts are reiterated in
the following sequence: First, the narrator reports, “They took him outside the
town and stoned him and he died.” In the next v erse, the roy al retainers
succinctly transm it this as a m essage to Jezebel, “Naboth has been stoned and is
dead.” Jezebel trium phantly announces the news to Ahab, prefacing it by
telling him that he can at last hasten to take possession of the cov eted v iney ard,
but in her v ersion the form ula is changed into “Naboth is not aliv e but dead.”
The little tautology m ay be to reassure her hesitant husband that Naboth is in
fact now out of the way or perhaps to postpone for a m om ent the blunt
m onosy llable “dead” (met). What Jezebel of course om its strategically from her
report is the ugly fact of the m anner of death—by stoning as the v erdict of a
trial she has trum ped up against Naboth. The dialogue-bound anticipation,
then, helps to underline a note of characterization. 3

There is another category of dialogue-bound narration that does not inv olv e
v erbatim m irroring of dialogue: it is the report of the fact that speech has
occurred. The sim plest and m ost ubiquitous instance of this category is the

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form ulaic phrases that introduce the direct discourse of each speaker in a
dialogue—“and he said,” “and he answered and said”—although, ev en with so
m echanical a conv ention, a forewarned reader m ight consider whether the
form ulas shift at all in accordance with the kind of statem ent or response that
the speaker goes on to m ake.

There is, in fact, one recurrent v ariation from this form ulaic pattern for
introducing dialogue that has an interesting expressiv e function. In quite a few
instances, we encounter this sequence: “and X said to Y,” followed, as we would
of course expect, by X’s words; and then, with no response from Y, a repetition of
the initial form ula for introducing speech, “and X said to Y,” with m ore of X’s
words. The second party to the dialogue m ay then respond in dialogue, though
in som e cases he or she does not. The pattern I hav e just described alm ost alway s
indicates som e problem that Y has in responding to X—either bafflem ent or
astonishm ent or confusion or som e related state. Dozens of such instances offer
persuasiv e ev idence that this was a clearly recognized conv ention.

When, for exam ple, the angry king of Gerar challenges Abraham for hav ing
passed Sarah off as his sister, thus allowing her to be taken into the roy al
harem , this is how the dialogue is presented (Gen. 2 0:9 –1 0):
And Abim elech called to Abraham and said to him , “What hav e y ou done
to us, and how hav e I offended y ou, that y ou should bring upon m e and
m y kingdom so great an offense? Things that should not be done y ou hav e
done to m e.” And Abim elech said to Abraham , “What did y ou im agine
when y ou did this thing?”

In this particular instance, Abim elech’s second speech, after what m ay be an

awkward silence on the part of Abraham , is essentially a concise restatem ent,
equally angry , of the first speech. Abraham finally answers, offering a
com plicated and far from transparent explanation that Sarah is in one sense
actually his sister and in another is not. The repetition of the form ula for
introducing speech, here as elsewhere, prov ides a clue to the audience that
Abraham is struggling with a certain difficulty in responding, and we as
m odern readers of biblical narrativ e should be alert to picking up this

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particular form al clue when it occurs.

Sum m ary of speech rather than actual quotation of it is fairly com m on, ev en
if quotation, as we hav e seen, is the m ore general rule. Again, I think it is often
useful to ask why at a particular narrativ e juncture the writer has chosen to
div erge from the norm of dialogue and to sum m arize instead. The reasons for
such div ergence, depending on the narrativ e m om ent, would range from a felt
need for rapid m ov em ent at a particular point in the narration, a desire to
av oid excessiv e repetition (a writer who has contriv ed to hav e som ething
repeated three tim es m ay want to resist the fourth tim e), som e consideration of
concealm ent or decorousness, or a dev aluation of what is said.

Thus, as soon as the y oung shepherd Dav id arriv es in the Israelite cam p with
supplem entary rations from hom e for his big brothers (1 Sam . 1 7 :2 3 ), the
narrator tells us, with no direct discourse preceding this statem ent, “As he was
speaking to them, look, the cham pion was com ing up from the Philistine lines,
Goliath the Philistine from Gath was his nam e, and he spoke words to the same
effect, and Dav id heard.” There are two reports of unquoted speech here, one at
the beginning and the other at the end of the v erse. In the first instance, the
writer is clearly not concerned with any incidental chitchat between Dav id and
his brothers during their reunion. A m om ent later, when Dav id inv eighs
against this insulting Philistine, we shall be giv en the actual dialogue between
Dav id and his oldest brother, Eliab (v erses 2 8–2 9 ), because it will v iv idly
dram atize the im patience of the grown m an with the im pertinent kid brother,
and that opposition is them atically relev ant to the whole episode of Dav id’s
unforeseen debut. In Dav id’s initial m eeting with his brothers, howev er, only
the m ere fact of speaking is im portant for the story , not what is said. Goliath’s
prev iously cited words of prov ocation, on the other hand, are alluded to and not
quoted here probably because the author felt that once was quite enough to
assault our (Israelite) ears with such blasphem ous abuse; and in any case, for
the m om ent it is necessary to keep the narrativ e focus firm ly on Dav id am ong
the Israelite soldiers, adv ancing toward that m om ent when he will m ake his
unheard-of proposal to go out and fight the enorm ous Philistine him self.

Finally , the com plem ent to such reports of the fact of speech or sum m aries of
the content of speech is, rather less frequently , the narrator’s inform ing us that

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a character has refrained from speech where we m ight hav e expected som e
utterance. The m ore com m on biblical practice, as we shall hav e occasion to see
elsewhere, is sim ply to cut off one speaker in a dialogue without com m ent,
leav ing us to ponder the reasons for the interrupted exchange. When som eone’s
silence is actually isolated for narration, we m ay infer that the refusal or
av oidance of speech is itself a significant link in the concatenation of the plot.
After Abner, the com m ander-in-chief of the house of Saul, has angrily rebuked
Ish-Bosheth, Saul’s heir, the narrator takes pains to inform us, “And he could
say back not a word m ore to Abner in his fear of him ” (2 Sam . 3 :1 1 ). This
silence with its explanation is politically portentous, for it dem onstrates the
unfitness of the pusillanim ous Ish-Bosheth to reign, which will giv e Abner cause
to turn from him to Dav id, and so it is deem ed worthy of narration. Still m ore
strikingly , the silence of both Dav id and Absalom after Am non’s rape of Tam ar
is singled out for narrativ e report (2 Sam . 1 3 :2 1 –2 2 ). For the king, the failure
to speak is a sign of dom estic and political im potence, leading directly to the
calam ities that will assail his household and his reign from this point onward.
For Absalom , the refusal to say any thing—to the perpetrator of the sexual
crim e, the narrator specifies—is om inous in an opposite way because it clearly
bet oken s a grim resolution to act in due tim e, and will ultim ately issue in
m urder and rebellion.

Of the two other general categories of reasons for narration in the Bible, the
report of essential narrativ e data is self-ev ident. There are v irtually no “free
m otifs” 4 in biblical narrativ e. The ancient Hebrew writer will nev er tell us,
say , that a character lazily stretched both arm s, sim ply out of an author’s sheer
m im etic pleasure in rendering a fam iliar hum an gesture; but he does report
that the dy ing Jacob crossed his hands when he reached out to bless Joseph’s two
sons, because that is a gesture fraught with significance in effecting a transfer of
priv ilege (the blessing of the right hand) from the elder to the y ounger son.
Whatev er is reported, then, can be assum ed to be essential to the story , but
som etim es special clues are prov ided in the tem po with which actions are
conv ey ed. Verbs tend to dom inate this biblical narration of the essential, and at
interv als we encounter sudden dense concentrations or unbroken chains of
v erbs, usually attached to a single subject, which indicate som e particular
intensity , rapidity , or single-m inded purposefulness of activ ity (Rebekah

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m aking the preparations for the deception of Isaac, Dav id finishing off Goliath in
battle).

The rem aining general function of narration is for conv ey ing what I hav e
proposed we think of as expository inform ation. The paradigm atic biblical story
—com pare, for exam ple, the beginning of Ruth, the beginning of Job, the
beginning of Sam uel, the beginning of the Saul narrativ e in 1 Sam uel 9 , the
beginning of the parable of the poor m an’s ewe in 2 Sam uel 1 2 —starts with a
few brief statem ents that nam e the principal character or characters, locate
them geographically , identify significant fam ily relationships, and in som e
instances prov ide a succinct m oral, social, or phy sical characterization of the
protagonist. It should be noted that this initial exposition is as a rule dev oid of
v erbs except for the v erb “to be,” which, as I hav e observ ed, often does not ev en
appear textually . The opening exposition, then, is pretem poral, statically
enum erating data that are not bound to a specific m om ent in tim e: they are
facts that stand before the tim e of the story proper.

In m any v ersions, these pretem poral v erses are followed by a transitional

segm ent in which true v erbs are introduced; but, according to the indication of
the adv erbial phrases accom pany ing them (otherwise biblical v erb tenses are
am biguous), these v erbs m ust be construed as either iterativ e or habitual. This
m eans that after an actionless beginning, ev ents begin to happen, but only
repeatedly , as a background of custom arily patterned behav ior to the real plot.
Finally , the narration m ov es into the report of actions occurring in sequence at
specific points in tim e (what Gérard Genette calls the “singulativ e” as against
the iterativ e sense), 5 and from that point, of course, it generally m ov es on to
dialogue.

Sm aller pieces of exposition are withheld to be rev ealed at som e appropriate

m om ent in the m idst of the tale. Rachel’s beauty is not m entioned when she first
appears but only just before we are told of Jacob’s lov e for her. Such explicit
reports of attitude—which usually occur in the sim ple form of X lov ed Y, hated,
feared, rev ered, had com passion for Y, or in nonrelational statem ents like X was
distressed, X rejoiced—I would regard as essentially expository assertions. That
is, they do not conv ey to us actions but inner conditions that color the actions,
affect them , explain them . In a nov el, to be sure, one m ight well object to such a

1 07
distinction, for what characters feel is often chiefly what happens—witness
Virginia Woolf or the late nov els of Henry Jam es—but I think the distinction
holds by and large for biblical narrativ e, with its steady adherence to acts
perform ed and words pronounced.

An analogous use of phy sical detail for exposition in the m idst of narration
occurs in the second of the two distinct v ersions of Dav id’s debut (1 Sam . 1 7 :4 2 ),
where Dav id’s ruddiness (or red hair; it is not certain which the word m eans)
and his good looks are not m entioned until the m om ent Goliath lay s ey es on him
in the m iddle of the battlefield. At such a m om ent, of course, those facts of
appearance can be m ade to leap out at the Philistine, as an added insult before
the unexpected injury . A m ere boy , and an egregiously redheaded, pretty boy
at that (this is precisely the order of the original sy ntax, arranged to m im ic
Goliath’s perceptions), has been sent to do battle with the m ightiest Philistine
warrior. Full-scale descriptions alm ost nev er occur, Goliath him self being one of
the few m arginal exceptions. In his case, we get four v erses (1 Sam . 1 7 :4 –7 ) at
the beginning of the episode cataloguing his arm or, his weapons, and the exact
m easure and weight of the m an and his im plem ents. The them atic purpose of
this exceptional attention to phy sical detail is obv ious: Goliath m ov es into the
action as a m an of iron and bronze, an alm ost grotesquely quantitativ e
em bodim ent of a hero, and this hulking m onum ent to an obtusely m echanical
conception of what constitutes power is m arked to be felled by a clev er shepherd
boy with his slingshot.

To pull together this ov erv iew of the v arious m odes of narrativ e presentation
in the Bible, let us follow the nicely controlled sequence and interplay of
exposition, narration proper, and dialogue at the beginning of one com plex
story : the birth of Sam uel (1 Sam uel 1 ). 6

1 . And there was a m an from Ram athaim -Zofim , from the high country
of Ephraim , and his nam e was Elkanah son of Yeruham son of Elihu son of
Tohu son of Zuf the Ephraim ite. 2 . And he had two wiv es; the nam e of the
one was Hannah and the nam e of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had
children but Hannah had no children.

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 The story opens with a clear-cut v ersion of pretem poral exposition,
identify ing the protagonist, her husband, her co-wife, their hom etown, and the
genealogical line of the husband. The only v erb here is “to be,” the concept of “to
hav e” in the Hebrew being expressed by the idiom , “to be unto. ...” For a
m om ent, it m ay appear as though Elkanah will be the protagonist—the
patriarchal conv ention of biblical literature requires that the opening form ula
be “there was a m an,” not a wom an, and that the m ale be the point of reference
for defining relations. But the story of Hannah about to be told is, if any thing, a
m atriarchal story , and that particular direction is signaled as early as v erse 2 ,
which inv okes the background of an em inently m atriarchal biblical ty pe-scene:
the annunciation of the birth of the hero to the barren wife (whose predicam ent
m ay be highlighted, as in the case of Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah, or
here, by juxtaposition with a less-lov ed but fertile co-wife). The pretem poral
exposition thus succinctly com pleted, the narration continues (v erse 3 ) with a
transitional statem ent in the iterativ e tense: “And this m an would go up from
his town ev ery y ear to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of Hosts at Shiloh,
and there the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, were priests to the LORD.”
With this indication of habitual activ ity , which also introduces the two corrupt
priests who will be challenged by the future Sam uel, it would seem that the
exposition is ov er and that the m ain plot will now be taken up, for the next
v erses begin with what looks like the notation of a specific m om ent in tim e:
4 . And when the day cam e round, Elkanah would offer a sacrifice and
giv e portions to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and daughters he
gav e portions. 5. But to Hannah he would giv e one double portion, for
Hannah he lov ed, and the LORD had closed her wom b. 6 . And her riv al
would torm ent her sorely , so as to prov oke her because the LORD had
closed her wom b. 7 . And thus it was done y ear after y ear—when she
would go up to the house of the LORD, the other would torm ent her and
she would weep and would not eat. 8. And Elkanah her husband said to
her, “Hannah, why do y ou weep and why do y ou not eat, and why is y our
heart afflicted? Am I not better to y ou than ten sons?”

“When the day cam e round”—the sam e form ula, for exam ple, introduces the
scene in the celestial court in the Job fram e-story —m akes us think that the

1 09
story proper has begun, but v erse 7 clearly announces that the little dram a of
the sacrificial portions and the confrontation of co-wiv es was habitually
enacted, from one y ear to the next. This places the action reported in these
v erses in what one m ight call a pseudo-singulativ e tense. Mom entarily , that is,
we m ight hav e assum ed that the barren Hannah’s ordeal by taunting took
place just once, but then it becom es ev ident, alas, that she has to suffer this
torm ent y ear after y ear. Perhaps the presentation in sum m ary of the clash of
the co-wiv es, so em inently the stuff of dialogue, is dictated by its status as a
recurrent ev ent. In any case, Elkanah’s touching effort to console his belov ed
wife, though also a periodically repeated action, is giv en the em phasis of direct
quotation as a clim actic conclusion of the exposition—perhaps as a way of fully
dram atizing Elkanah’s tender dev otion to Hannah before he m ust be m ov ed off
the scene to m ake way for Eli the priest, according to the requirem ents of the
conv ention of dialogue that allows the interchange of only two characters at a
tim e. It should be noted that Hannah is not assigned any response to this
iterativ e plea of her husband’s. Throughout the exposition she rem ains a silent,
suffering figure, addressed for ev il and good by Peninnah and Elkanah
respectiv ely ; when she herself finally speaks, it will be first to God, a form al
m ark of her dignity and her destiny . With no further setting of the concrete
scene, the narrativ e now m ov es on to the m ain action:
9 . And Hannah arose after the eating in Shiloh and after the drinking,
while Eli the priest was sitting in a chair by the doorpost of the LORD’s
tem ple. 1 0. And she was deeply em bittered, and she pray ed to the LORD,
weeping all the while. 1 1 . And she v owed a v ow and said, “LORD of Hosts,
if You really will look on Your serv ant’s woe and rem em ber m e, and forget
not Your serv ant and giv e Your serv ant m ale seed, I will giv e him to the
LORD all the day s of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” 1 2 . And it
happened as she went on with her pray er before the LORD, with Eli
watching her m outh, 1 3 . as Hannah was speaking in her heart, her lips
alone m ov ing and her v oice was not heard, Eli thought she was drunk.
1 4 . And Eli said to her,
“How long will y ou go on drunk? Rid y ourself of y our wine!”

1 5. And Hannah answered and said, “No, m y lord! A bleak-spirited

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 wom an am I. Neither wine nor hard drink hav e I drunk, but I poured out
m y heart to the LORD. 1 6 . Think not y our serv ant a worthless girl, for
out of m y great trouble and torm ent I hav e spoken till now.” 1 7 . And Eli
answered and said, “Go in peace, and m ay the God of Israel grant y our
petition which y ou asked of Him .” 1 8. And she said, “May y our serv ant
but find fav or in y our ey es.” And the wom an went on her way , and she
ate, and her face was no longer downcast. 1 9 . And they rose early the
next m orning, and bowed before the LORD and cam e to their hom e in
Ram ah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife and the LORD rem em bered
her.

The eating and drinking after the annual or seasonal sacrifice, a joy ous
occasion in which, as we hav e seen, the anguished Hannah was repeatedly
unwilling to join, serv e as a cross-stitch binding the exposition to the m ain
narrativ e. Or to inv oke another sim ile of connection, the sacrificial feast works
like a faux raccord between two scenes in a film : first we see the y early feast and
a weeping Hannah’s refusal of food in a habitual tim e-schem e as part of
Elkanah’s iterativ e dialogue; then, one such feast has just been com pleted by
the fam ily , and a tearful, fasting Hannah is now seen alone at a particular
m om ent in tim e—the m om ent she will m ake her entrance into history —pray ing
to God. The writer takes only two v erses, one to locate Hannah and Eli
tem porally and spatially , the other to characterize her as em bittered and still
weeping, before he plunges into Hannah’s direct discourse, in which her
character and destiny will be m ost v iv idly rev ealed. Her story begins, then,
with one-sided dialogue (there are of course m any biblical instances in which
there is two-sided dialogue between a hum an being and God) that is ov erseen
rather than ov erheard by a second character. Hannah’s pray er is m eant to
seem direct and artless. Poetic sy m m etries of statem ent are av oided; she strings
out a series of ov erlapping v erbs—see, rem em ber, don’t forget, giv e—that
prov ide an anxious, cum ulativ e statem ent of her urgent plea. The only ev ident
“dev ice” in the language of the pray er is the alm ost naiv e rev ersed do ut des
form ulation: “if You ... give y our serv ant m ale seed, I will give him to the
LORD.” The m eaning of this v ow is then m ade explicit by the use of the
form ulaic expression for Nazirites, “no razor shall touch his head.” All in all, it is

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just the sort of pray er that a sim ple, sincere country wife, desperate in her
barrenness, would utter.

The ensuing dialogue between Hannah and Eli exploits the principle of
character differentiation through contrast that we hav e observ ed in other
passages. After Hannah’s naiv e speech, Eli expresses his m istaken rebuke in
poetic parallelism that in its form ality resem bles the beginning of a prophetic
denunciation: “How long will y ou go on drunk? / Rid y ourself of y our wine!”
(This is, we m ight note, the second priest we hav e encountered who launches a
dialogue with an obtuse statem ent couched in m etrically regular form .)
Hannah’s response is respectful, as befits a sim ple Ephraim ite wom an
addressing a priest, while her speech extends the sy ntactic pattern of stringing
together brief direct statem ents that we observ ed in her pray er. Eli is
im m ediately persuaded by the straightforwardness of her confession, and in a
m uch gentler tone he pray s that God grant her wish (it is also possible to
construe his words gram m atically as a prediction that God will grant her wish).
Hannah concludes the dialogue with a rev erential form ula, “May y our serv ant
but find fav or in y our ey es” (the new Jewish Publication Society translation,
inv oking the practices of a later social realm , renders this less literally as: “You
are m ost kind to y our handm aid”). What follows, according to the urgent
purposefulness of biblical narrativ e tem po, is: eating (a token of Hannah’s
inward reconciliation), departure, sexual intercourse, conception (God’s
“rem em bering” Hannah), and, in the subsequent v erse, the birth of Sam uel.
The rising and the return to the place of origin form ally m ark the end of the
narrativ e segm ent.

This entire interweav ing of exposition, narration proper, and dialogue is

executed within a fram e of expectations set up by the annunciation ty pe-scene,
and the role of that particular conv ention ought to be m entioned in order to
round out our sense of the artistry of the episode. The v ery use of the
conv ention, of course, points to a weighty role in history for the child who is to
be born, since only for such portentous figures is this sort of div ine interv ention
in the natural order of conception required. (The story of the child born to the
Shunam ite wom an in 2 Kings 4 is the sole exception; there the annunciation
ty pe-scene clearly occurs, but the child rem ains anony m ous and without a
m om entous future.) The initial elem ents of the ty pe-scene, as we hav e noted,

112
follow the fixed pattern: the strife between wiv es, the husband’s special affection
for the barren wife. Now, the crucial central m otif in the annunciation ty pe-
scene is the barren wife’s being v ouchsafed an oracle, a prophecy from a m an of
God, or a prom ise from an angel, that she will be granted a son, som etim es with
an explicit indication of the son’s destiny , often with the inv ocation of the
form ula, “At this season next y ear, y ou will be em bracing a son.”

What is interesting about Hannah’s annunciation, when it is com pared with

other occurrences of this particular ty pe-scene, is the odd obliquity of the
prom ise. We hear the words of Hannah’s pray er but no im m ediate response
from God. The barren m other’s bitterness is giv en unusual prom inence in this
v ersion—perhaps, one m ight conjecture, because it is a them atically apt
introduction to the birth of a lonely leader whose ultim ate authority the people
will finally circum v ent to establish the m onarchy against which he warns.

The particular form taken here by the annunciation is v irtually ironic. Eli
the priest, who at first grossly m isconstrued what Hannah was doing, pray s for
or perhaps prom ises the fulfillm ent of her pray er, and whatev er his purpose, it
appears to be sufficient to m ake Hannah feel reconciled with her present
condition. If his statem ent is m eant as a consoling prediction, he is a singularly
ignorant conduit of div ine intentions, for Hannah has not ev en told him what it
was she was pray ing for, only that she was pleading to God in great anguish.
The effect of all this is to subv ert the priest’s role as intercessor. The generalized
petition/prediction he pronounces to her is really superfluous, for it is her
specifically worded heartfelt supplication for a son that God answers through
the fact of conception. Com pared to the angels and m en of God who deliv er the
good news in other annunciation ty pe-scenes, the priest here play s a peripheral
and perhaps slightly foolish role. This oblique underm ining of Eli’s authority is
of course essentially relev ant to the story of Sam uel: the house of Eli will be cut
off, his iniquitous sons will be replaced in the sanctuary by Sam uel him self, and
it will be Sam uel, not his m aster Eli, who will hear the v oice of God distinctly
addressing him in the sanctuary . The idea of rev elation, in other words, is
param ount to the story of Sam uel, whose authority will deriv e neither from
cultic function, like the priests before him , nor from m ilitary power, like the
judges before him and the kings after him , but from prophetic experience, from
an im m ediate, m orally directiv e call from God. For this exem plary figure of

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prophetic leadership, Hannah’s silent, priv ate pray er and the obtuseness of the
well-m eaning priest who superfluously offers him self as intercessor between her
and God prov ide just the right kind of annunciation.

The key to these concerted m eans for the rendering of a narrativ e ev ent in the
Bible is the writer’s desire to giv e each fictional situation, with m inim al
authorial intrusion, a m arked them atic direction as well as m oral-psy chological
depth. On the restricted scale of their highly laconic narrativ es, the ancient
Hebrew authors contriv ed to achiev e som ething resem bling Flaubert’s
aspiration in his sem inal art-nov el to “achiev e dram atic effect sim ply by the
interweav ing of dialogue and by contrasts of character.” 7 In Flaubert’s case, the
ideal of authorial im passiv ity , the desire to be ev ery where present but alway s
inv isible in the work, stem s from a dream of godlike om nipotence; from a horror
of being personally contam inated by the distasteful hum an reality of the
represented world; and from the need to escape the effusiv eness that had
v itiated so m uch European literature of the prev ious halfcentury . In biblical
narrativ e, im passiv ity would seem by contrast to flow from an intuitiv e sense of
the theologically appropriate m eans for the representation of hum an liv es
under the ov erarching dom inion of an ultim ately unknowable but ethical God.

Ev ery hum an agent m ust be allowed the freedom to struggle with his or her
destiny through his or her own words and acts. Form ally , this m eans that the
writer m ust perm it each character to m anifest or rev eal him self or herself
chiefly through dialogue but of course also significantly through action,
without the im position of an obtrusiv e apparatus of authorial interpretation
and judgm ent. The Hebrew narrator does not openly m eddle with the
personages he presents, just as God creates in each hum an personality a fierce
tangle of intentions, em otions, and calculations caught in a translucent net of
language, which is left for the indiv idual him self to sort out in the ev anescence
of a single lifetim e.

The intersection of characters through their own words m atters before all else
in this narrativ e definition of the hum an predicam ent, but such intersection
does not take place in a trackless v oid. We hav e observ ed how a sty lizing
conv ention like the ty pe-scene can offer them atic clues to the road that will be
taken in the larger progress of the narrativ e and its im plicit v alues. Still m ore

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specific them atic indicators are prov ided by the fine tracery of repetitiv e
dev ices that m arks alm ost ev ery biblical tale, and this whole process of subtle
elaboration through seem ing reiteration now deserv es closer attention.

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 5

The Techniques of Repetition

ONE OF THE m ost im posing barriers that stands between the m odern reader
and the im aginativ e subtlety of biblical narrativ e is the extraordinary
prom inence of v erbatim repetition in the Bible. Accustom ed as we are to m odes
of narration in which elem ents of repetition are m ade to seem far less obtrusiv e,
this habit of constantly restating m aterial is bound to giv e us trouble, especially
in a narrativ e that otherwise adheres so ev idently to the strictest econom y of
m eans. Repetition is, I would guess, the feature of biblical narrativ e that looks
m ost “prim itiv e” to the casual m odern ey e, reflecting, we m ay im agine, a
m entality alien to our own and a radically different approach to ordering
experience from the ones fam iliar to us.

In the m ore leisurely , sim pler life-rhy thm s of the ancient Near East, so it
would seem , ev ery instruction, ev ery prediction, ev ery reported action had to
be repeated word for word in an inexorable literalism as it was obey ed, fulfilled,
or reported to another party . Perhaps, som e hav e im pressionistically
conjectured, there is an “Oriental” sense of the intrinsic pleasingness of
repetition in the underly ing aesthetic of the Bible. The extrem e instance would
be the description in Num bers 7 :1 2 –83 of the gifts brought to the sanctuary by
the princes of the twelv e tribes. Each tribe offers an identical set of gifts, but
these hav e to be enum erated twelv e tim es in an identical sequence of v erses,
only the nam es of the princes and tribes being changed. It seem s safe to assum e
som e sort of cultic-historical function for this particular group of repetitions—
one can im agine the m em bers of each tribe waiting to hear the indiv idual item s
on their own ancestors’ archety pal offering to the LORD—though the entire
passage surely presupposes a certain delight on the part of the writer and his
audience in the v ery m echanism of patient repetition.

Thinking in som ewhat m ore concrete historical term s, v arious com m entators
hav e attributed the repetitiv e features of biblical narrativ e to its oral origins, to
the background of folklore from which it draws, and to the com posite nature of
the text that has been transm itted to us. The last of these three explanations is

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the least interesting and finally accounts for the sm allest num ber of cases.
There are occasional v erses repeated out of scribal error, but under scrutiny
m ost instances of repetition prov e to be quite purposeful, and this would include
the repetition not only of relativ ely brief statem ents but, as I shall try to show
in chapter 7 , of whole episodes presum ably com piled from parallel traditions.

The notion of folklore cov ers a little m ore ground, though I think it is rarely
the sufficient explanation for the occurrence of repetition that its m ore
program m atic adv ocates im agine it to be. One of the infrequent cases in which
repetition would appear to serv e a prim arily folkloric function is the presence of
two com peting etiological tales, both of which seem to hav e dem anded
representation in the text as explanations of the sam e fact. Thus, to account for
a current folk-say ing (mashal), “Is Saul, too, am ong the prophets?” two different
stories are reported of his m eeting a com pany of prophets and joining them in
m anic ecstasy . Sam uel presides, in rather different way s, ov er both encounters,
but the first (1 Sam uel 1 0) occurs im m ediately after Saul’s anointm ent and is
part of the process of his initiation as king, stressing the descent of God’s spirit on
him and his becom ing “another m an,” while the second encounter (1 Sam uel
1 9 ) deflects him from his pursuit of Dav id and stresses the fact of his rolling
naked in his prophetic frenzy . One can, of course, argue for a certain purposeful
pattern ev en in such a repetition: the sam e div ine power that m akes Saul
different from him self and enables him for the kingship later strips and reduces
him as the div ine election shifts from Saul to Dav id. There is, howev er, at least
a suspicion of narrativ e im probability in this identical bizarre action recurring
in such different contexts, and one m ay reasonably conclude that the pressure
of com peting etiologies for the enigm atic folk-say ing determ ined the repetition
m ore than the artful treatm ent of character and them e. 1 Ev en so, there is a
satisfy ing sy m m etry in the appearance of the two stories as antithetical
bookends at the beginning and end of Saul’s narrativ e, encouraging the
inference that these two com peting etiologies hav e been strategically placed in
the editorial process.

In m any instances, the background of folklore is perceptible less in the specific

m aterial repeated than in the form the repetition assum es, the structure of the
tale. Again and again one finds biblical stories cast in the fam iliar folktale form

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of incident, repetition, second repetition with v ariation or rev ersal (a form we
all know from fairy tales like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” or
“Rum pelstiltskin”). At tim es this pattern is followed with schem atic sim plicity ,
and in such cases folkloric practice m ay well be an adequate explanation of the
repetitions. Thus, in 2 Kings 1 , King Ahaziah sends a captain with his com pany
three tim es to Elijah. The first two tim es, in identical v erses, fire descends from
the heav ens and consum es the whole m ilitary contingent. The third tim e, the
exact repetition is interrupted just as Elijah is about to perform his incendiary
trick once m ore, when the third captain pleads for m ercy and Elijah is
prom pted by an angel to grant the plea. The repetitions here m ay hav e a
certain cum ulativ e force, but it is hard to see how the rigid pattern of the
folktale has been in any significant way transform ed or subtilized. Elsewhere, as
we shall hav e occasion to observ e, the one-two-three-change structure of folktale
repetition is reshaped with conscious artistry .

Finally , the oral context of biblical narrativ e has been inv oked as a general
explanation of its repetitiv e m ode of exposition. One does not necessarily hav e to
assum e, as som e scholars hav e plausibly proposed, that the biblical narrativ es
deriv e from long-standing oral traditions; for in any case it is altogether likely
that they were written chiefly for oral presentation. As sev eral indications in
the Bible itself suggest, the narrativ es would ty pically hav e been read out from
a scroll to som e sort of assem bled audience (m any of whom would presum ably
not hav e been literate) rather than passed around to be read in our sense. The
unrolling scroll, then, was in one respect like the unrolling spool of a film
projector, for tim e and the sequence of ev ents presented in it could not
ordinarily be halted or altered, and the only conv enient way of fixing a
particular action or statem ent for special inspection was by repeating it.

The necessities of oral deliv ery can be im agined in still sim pler term s. If y ou
were a Judean herdsm an standing in the outer circle of listeners while the story
of the Ten Plagues was being read, y ou m ight m iss a few phrases when God
instructs Moses about turning the Nile into blood (Exod. 7 :1 7 –1 8), but y ou
could easily pick up what y ou had lost when the instructions were alm ost
im m ediately repeated v erbatim as narrated action (Exod. 7 :2 0–2 1 ). If y ou
were close enough to the reader to catch ev ery word, y ou could still enjoy the
satisfaction of hearing each indiv idual term of God’s grim prediction, first stated

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in the prophetic future, then restated as accom plished fact, with an occasional
elegant v ariation of the v erbatim repetition through the substitution of a
sy nony m (in v erse 1 8 the Egy ptians are unable to drink the water, nilʾu lishtot;
in v erse 2 1 , they cannot drink, loʾ-yakhlu lishtot ). Here, as elsewhere, the
solution to what one infers were the phy sical difficulties of deliv ering the story
orally jibes perfectly with the v ision of history that inform s the story ; for
biblical narrativ e, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Chronicles, is an
account of how div ine word—and in m ore am biguous way s, often hum an word
as well—becom es historical fact. The constantly reiterated pattern, then, of
com m and or prophecy closely followed by its v erbatim fulfillm ent confirm s an
underly ing v iew of historical causality ; it translates into a central narrativ e
dev ice the unswerv ing authority of a m onotheistic God m anifesting Him self in
language.

These large im plications of repetition in biblical narrativ e will bear further

reflection, but first the com plexity and v ariety of this seem ingly m echanical
dev ice hav e to be grasped in detail. Writers in all tim es and places hav e m ade
artistic occasions out of the form al lim itations of their m edium and of their
inherited conv entions, and this is dem onstrably true of the biblical authors. If
the requirem ents of oral deliv ery and a tim e-honored tradition of story telling
m ay hav e prescribed a m ode of narration in which frequent v erbatim
repetition was expected, the authors of the biblical narrativ es astutely
discov ered how the slightest strategic v ariations in the pattern of repetitions
could serv e the purposes of com m entary , analy sis, foreshadowing, them atic
assertion, with a wonderful com bination of subtle understatem ent and
dram atic force.

Up to this point, it m ay seem as though I hav e been assum ing an absolute

distinctiv eness in the Bible’s use of repetition. This could hardly be the case,
since at least som e parts of a whole spectrum of repetitiv e dev ices are bound to
be present wherev er there is pattern in narration, from Hom er to Günter Grass.
Certain characteristic biblical uses of repetition closely resem ble the kinds of
repetition that are fam iliar artistic dev ices in short stories and nov els, dram atic
and epic poem s, written elsewhere and later. King Lear can serv e as an efficient
analogue because it is a work that m akes spectacularly brilliant use of a wide
range of repetitiv e dev ices, and these hav e been conv eniently classified by

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Bruce F. Kawin in Telling I t Again and Again, 2 a study of the narrativ e uses of
repetition. The m ost obv ious and general kind of repetition in Lear is situational
rather than literal, particularly em bodied in the m ultiple parallels of the
double plot. The Bible does not em ploy sy m m etrical double plots, but it
constantly insists on parallels of situation and reiterations of m otif that prov ide
m oral and psy chological com m entary on each other (like the chain of sibling
struggles, the displacem ent of the elder by the y ounger, in Genesis). Since the
use of such parallels and recurrent m otifs is ubiquitous in narrativ e literature,
there is no special need here to elucidate its presence in the Bible, though it is an
aspect of the biblical tale that alway s needs careful scrutiny .

At the other end of the spectrum of repetition in Lear is the reiteration of the
sam e word in unbroken sequence (like the m ad Lear’s “kill, kill, kill, kill ...” or
Lear’s “nev er, nev er, nev er, nev er, nev er” ov er the body of Cordelia)—what
Kawin aptly describes as “a sy ntax of pure em phasis.” This extrem e possibility
of repetition, where the dev ice has a totally dram atic justification as the
expression of a kind of m ental stam m er, is bound to be relativ ely rare,
especially in nondram atic literature, but it does occur occasionally in the Bible,
m ost m em orably when Dav id is inform ed of Absalom ’s death (2 Sam uel 1 9 ).
The poetking, who elsewhere responds to the report of deaths with eloquent
elegies, here sim ply sobs, “Absalom , Absalom , m y son, m y son,” repeating “m y
son” eight tim es in two v erses (2 Sam . 1 9 :1 ,5).

More perv asiv ely , one discov ers in Lear, as in so m any play s and nov els, a
repetition of certain key words (like the v erb “crack”) that becom e them atic
ideas through their recurrence at different junctures, carry ing, as Kawin puts
it, “the m eanings they hav e acquired in earlier contexts with them into their
present and future contexts, im m ensely com plicating and interrelating the
concerns and actions of the play .”

This kind of word-m otif, as a good m any com m entators hav e recognized, is
one of the m ost com m on features of the narrativ e art of the Bible. But in biblical
prose, the reiteration of key words has been form alized into a prom inent
conv ention that is m ade to play a m uch m ore central role in the dev elopm ent of
them atic argum ent than does the repetition of such key words in other
narrativ e traditions. Hebrew writers m ay hav e been led to ev olv e this

1 20
conv ention by the v ery structure of the language, which with its sy stem of
triliteral roots m akes the ety m ological nucleus of both v erbs and nouns,
howev er conjugated and declined, constantly transparent, and probably also by
the idiom atic patterns of Hebrew, which tolerate a m uch higher degree of
repetition than is com m on in Western languages. Martin Buber and Franz
Rosenzweig, in the explanatory prefaces to their Germ an translation of the Bible
done m ore than half a century ago, were the first to recognize that this kind of
purposeful repetition of words constitutes a distinctiv e conv ention of biblical
prose, which they called Leitwortstil (literally , “leading-word sty le”), coining
Leitwort on the m odel of Leitmotiv. Buber’s description of the phenom enon
rem ains definitiv e:
A Leitwort is a word or a word-root that recurs significantly in a text, in a
continuum of texts, or in a configuration of texts: by following these
repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a m eaning of the text, or at
any rate, the m eaning will be rev ealed m ore strikingly . The repetition, as
we hav e said, need not be m erely of the word itself but also of the word-
root; in fact, the v ery difference of words can often intensify the dy nam ic
action of the repetition. I call it “dy nam ic” because between com binations
of sounds related to one another in this m anner a kind of m ov em ent takes
place: if one im agines the entire text deploy ed before him , one can sense
wav es m ov ing back and forth between the words. The m easured
repetition that m atches the inner rhy thm of the text, or rather, that
wells up from it, is one of the m ost powerful m eans for conv ey ing
m eaning without expressing it. 3

The operation of the Leitwort, of course, will not be so ev ident in translation as

in the original: Buber and Rosenzweig went to extrem e lengths in their Germ an
v ersion to preserv e all Leitwörter; unfortunately , m ost m odern English
translations go to the opposite extrem e, constantly translating the sam e word
with different English equiv alents for the sake of fluency and supposed
precision. Nev ertheless, the repetition of key words is so prom inent in m any
biblical narrativ es that one can still follow it fairly well in translation,
especially if one uses the King Jam es Version (and in m y own translations
throughout this study I hav e tried within reasonable lim its to rem ain faithful to

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these patterns of repetition).

Let m e for the m om ent cite just one relativ ely sim ple exam ple where a
repeated word in a single episode serv es as the chief m eans of them atic
exposition within the lim ited unit. The confrontation between Sam uel and Saul
ov er the king’s failure to destroy all of the Am alekites and all of their possessions
(1 Sam uel 1 5) is wov en out of a series of v ariations on the key term s “listen,”
“v oice,” “word.” Sam uel begins by enjoining Saul to listen to the v oice of God;
when the king returns v ictorious from battle, the prophet is dism ay ed by the
v oice (or sound, qol) of sheep and the v oice of cattle that he hears. Thundering
denunciation in v erse, he tells Saul that what the LORD wants is “listening to
the v oice of the LORD, / For listening is better than sacrifice, / hearkening, than
the fat of ram s” (1 Sam . 1 5:2 2 ); and a contrite Saul apologizes that he has
transgressed the word of the LORD and instead listened to the v oice of the people
(vox populi being here the them atic opposite of vox dei). In the next chapter,
m oreov er, as the writer m ov es from the rejection of Saul to the election of
Dav id, he deftly changes his key word from “listen” to “see”: after the king’s
failure to listen, we hav e the prophet’s learning to see the one truly fit to be
king. 4

Word-m otifs are m ore ty pically used, howev er, in larger narrativ e units, to
sustain a them atic dev elopm ent and to establish instructiv e connections
between seem ingly disparate episodes. Michael Fishbane has conv incingly
argued that the entire cy cle of tales about Jacob is structured through the
reiteration of Leitwörter and them es as a series of “sy m m etrical fram ings” that
“reflect a considered technique of com position.” The two m ost decisiv e words for
the organization of this m aterial in Genesis are “blessing” and “birthright” (in
Hebrew a pun, berakhah and bekhorah). These key words, supported by a whole
set of subsidiary word-m otifs, m ark the connections between them atically
parallel narrativ e units, creating “a form al structure of inclusions and order
which stand in ironic contrast to the m achinations of the content.” 5 Although
other extended narrativ es m ay not exhibit the sy m m etry of structure Fishbane
finds in the Jacob cy cle, this significant recurrence of a few key words ov er long
stretches of text is equally ev ident elsewhere—perhaps m ost strikingly in the
Joseph story , where the Leitwörter are “recognize,” “m an,” “m aster,” “slav e,”

1 22
and “house.”

This sort of literary m echanism , at once a unify ing dev ice and a focus of
dev elopm ent in the narrativ e, will be recognizable to any one fam iliar with,
say , Shakespeare’s elaboration of the m ultiple im plications of the word “tim e” in
1 Henry I V, or with Fielding’s m ultifariously ironic treatm ent of “prudence” in
Tom Jones, or, in a m ore m usically form al com positional deploy m ent, Joy ce’s
conjuring with “y es” in Molly Bloom ’s soliloquy .

The characteristic biblical strategy , clearest in the conv ention of Leitwortstil,

is to call explicit attention to the v erbal repetition; but there are also num erous
instances in which repetition becom es a Jam esian “figure in the carpet,” half-
hidden, sublim inally insistent, in the m anner m ost congenial to m odern
literary sensibilities. Sam son, for exam ple, is quietly but effectiv ely associated
with a v erbal and im agistic m otif of fire (Judges 1 4 –1 6 ). The v arious cords that
fail to bind him are likened to flax dissolv ing in fire when he snaps them with
his strength (Judg. 1 5:1 4 ). The thirty Philistine m en threaten his first wife
with death by fire if she does not obtain for them the answer to Sam son’s riddle
(Judg. 1 4 :1 5). When Sam son is discarded as a husband by the action of his first
father-in-law, he responds by ty ing torches to the tails of foxes and setting the
Philistine fields on fire (Judg. 1 5:4 –5). The im m ediate reaction of the Philistines
is to m ake a roaring bonfire out of the household of Sam son’s recent wife, with
her and her father in the m idst of the flam es (Judg. 1 5:6 ). By the tim e we get to
the captiv e Sam son bringing down the tem ple of Dagon on him self and sev eral
thousand of his enem ies, though there is no actual fire in this clim actic scene,
fire has becom e a m etony m ic im age of Sam son him self: a blind, uncontrolled
force, leav ing a terrible swath of destruction behind it, finally consum ing itself
together with whatev er stands in its way .

What we find, then, in biblical narrativ e is an elaborately integrated sy stem

of repetitions, som e dependent on the actual recurrence of indiv idual phonem es,
words, or short phrases, others linked instead to the actions, im ages, and ideas
that are part of the world of the narrativ e we “reconstruct” as readers but that
are not necessarily wov en into the v erbal texture of the narrativ e. The two
kinds of repetition, of course, are som ewhat different in their effect, but they are
often used together by the Hebrew writers to reinforce each other and to

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produce a concerted whole. Let m e propose a scale of repetitiv e structuring and
focusing dev ices in biblical narrativ e running from the sm allest and m ost
unitary elem ents to the largest and m ost com posite ones:
1 . Leitwort. Through abundant repetition, the sem antic range of the word-
root is explored, different form s of the root are deploy ed, branching off at
tim es into phonetic relativ es (that is, word-play ), sy nony m ity , and
antony m ity ; by v irtue of its v erbal status, the Leitwort refers
im m ediately to m eaning and thus to them e as well. (For exam ple, go and
return in the Book of Ruth; the v erb to see with its poetic sy nony m s in the
Balaam story .)

2 . Motif. A concrete im age, sensory quality , action, or object recurs through

a particular narrativ e; it m ay be interm ittently associated with a
Leitwort; it has no m eaning in itself without the defining context of the
narrativ e; it m ay be incipiently sy m bolic or instead prim arily a m eans of
giv ing form al coherence to a narrativ e. (For exam ple, fire in the Sam son
story ; stones and the colors white and red in the Jacob story ; water in the
Moses cy cle; dream s, prisons and pits, silv er in the Joseph story .)

3 . Theme. An idea that is part of the v alue-sy stem of the narrativ e—it m ay
be m oral, m oral-psy chological, legal, political, historiosophical,
theological—is m ade ev ident in som e recurring pattern. It is often
associated with one or m ore Leitwörter but it is not co-extensiv e with
them ; it m ay also be associated with a m otif. (For exam ple, the rev ersal of
prim ogeniture in Genesis; obedience v ersus rebellion in the Wilderness
stories; knowledge in the Joseph story ; exile and prom ised land; the
rejection and election of the m onarch in Sam uel and Kings.)

4 . Sequence of actions. This pattern appears m ost com m only and m ost
clearly in the folktale form of three consecutiv e repetitions, or three plus
one, with som e intensification or increm ent from one occurrence to the
next, usually concluding either in a clim ax or a rev ersal. (For exam ple,
the three captains and their com panies threatened with fiery destruction
in 2 Kings 1 ; the three catastrophes that destroy Job’s possessions,
followed by a fourth in which his children are killed; Balaam ’s failure to
direct the ass three tim es.)

1 24
 5. Type-scene. This is an episode occurring at a portentous m om ent in the
career of the hero that is com posed of a fixed sequence of m otifs. It is often
associated with certain recurrent them es; it is not bound to specific
Leitwörter, though occasionally a recurrent term or phrase m ay help
m ark the presence of a particular ty pe-scene. (For exam ple, the
annunciation of the birth of the hero, the betrothal by the well, the trial
in the wilderness.)

It will be noted that the two ends of this schem a of structuring dev ices, the
Leitwort and the ty pe-scene, reflect distinctiv ely biblical literary conv entions
(though of course one can find approxim ate analogues in other narrativ e
traditions), while the three m iddle term s, m otif, them e, 6 and sequence of
actions, are abundantly present in the broadest spectrum of narrativ e works.
The uses of repetition, then, that we hav e been rev iewing are to an appreciable
degree shared by the Bible with other kinds of narrativ e literature. What m ost
distinguishes repetition in biblical narrativ e is the explicitness and form ality
with which it is generally em ploy ed, qualities that, to return to our initial
difficulty , support an unusual proportion of v erbatim restatem ent. In order to
appreciate the artfulness of this kind of repetition, a m odern reader has to
cultiv ate the com plem entary opposite of the habits of perception he or she m ost
frequently puts to use in reading. That is, in narrativ es where there is a great
density of specified fictional data and som e com m itm ent to m aking the m im etic
elem ents of sty le and structure m ore prom inent than the poetic ones, repetition
tends to be at least partly cam ouflaged, and we are expected to detect it, to pick
it out as a subtle thread of recurrence in a v ariegated pattern, a flash of
suggestiv e likeness in seem ing differences. (The obv ious exception to this
tendency in Western literature would be extrem e fictional experim ents in
sty lization, like those of Gertrude Stein or Alain Robbe-Grillet, where form al
repetition is m ade an obtrusiv e structural principle.) When, on the other hand,
y ou are confronted with an extrem ely spare narrativ e, m arked by form al
sy m m etries, that exhibits a high degree of literal repetition, what y ou hav e to
look for m ore frequently is the sm all but rev ealing differences in the seem ing
sim ilarities, the nodes of em ergent new m eanings in the pattern of regular
expectations created by explicit repetition.

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 Perhaps the conceptual m atrix for this way of using repetition is to be sought
in biblical poetry , which, as in m ost cultures, antedates prose as a v ehicle of
literary expression. Such connections are bound to be conjectural, but what I
hav e in m ind is essentially this: the parallelism of biblical v erse constituted a
structure in which, through the approxim ately sy nony m ous half-lines or
v ersets, there was constant repetition that was nev er really repetition. This is
true not just inadv ertently because there are no true sy nony m s, so that ev ery
restatem ent is a new statem ent, but because the conscious or intuitiv e art of
poetic parallelism was to adv ance the poetic argum ent in seem ing to repeat it—
intensify ing, specify ing, com plem enting, qualify ing, contrasting, expanding
the sem antic m aterial of each initial v erset in its apparent repetition. Biblical
prose, of course, operates sty listically in exactly the opposite way , word-for-word
restatem ent rather than inv entiv e sy nony m ity being the norm for repetition;
but in both cases, I would suggest, the ideal reader (originally , listener) is
expected to attend closely to the constantly em erging differences in a m edium
that seem s predicated on constant recurrence.

Such attention is particularly crucial to the understanding of a m ajor

narrativ e conv ention of the Bible to which I should now like to turn. So far, in
dealing with Leitwort, m otif, them e, and sequence of actions, we hav e been
concerned with the sort of repetition that is essentially reiterative: som e
dev eloping aspect of the story is highlighted through repetition in the linear
deploy m ent of the narrativ e. But there is a different kind of biblical repetition,
which is phrasal rather than v erbal or a m atter of m otif, them e, and action.
Here entire statem ents are repeated, either by different characters, by the
narrator, or by the narrator and one or m ore of the characters in concert, with
sm all but im portant changes introduced in what usually looks at first glance
like v erbatim repetition. Many of the psy chological, m oral, and dram atic
com plications of biblical narrativ e are produced through this technique. This is
an original and often quite subtle narrativ e dev ice dev eloped by the biblical
writers that as far as I know is not used in other literatures.

How it actually works will becom e clear through som e exam ples. Broadly ,
when repetitions with significant v ariations occur in biblical narrativ e, the
changes introduced can point to an intensification, clim actic dev elopm ent,

1 26
acceleration, of the actions and attitudes initially represented, or, on the other
hand, to som e unexpected, perhaps unsettling, new rev elation of character or
plot. The form er category is the sim pler of the two, related as it is to the dev ice
of increm ental repetition we m ight expect in an ancient narrativ e, and one
illustration will suffice.

In 1 Kings 1 , after Adonijah has laid claim to the throne, Nathan the prophet
giv es the following adv ice to Bathsheba: “Go and get y ou to King Dav id and say
to him , ‘Has not m y lord the king sworn to y our serv ant in these words:
Solomon your son shall be king after me and he shall sit on my throne? And why
has Adonijah becom e king?’” (1 Kings 1 :1 3 ). Nathan goes on to assure
Bathsheba that he will m ake his entrance while she is still speaking to Dav id
and will fill in (that is literally the v erb he uses) whatev er she has left unsaid.
Now, one of the intriguing aspects of this whole story —for the om issions of
biblical narrativ e are as cunning as its repetitions—is that we hav e no way of
knowing whether Dav id in fact m ade such a pledge in fav or of Solom on or
whether it is a pious (?) fraud that Nathan and Bathsheba are foisting on the old
and failing king, who hardly seem s to know at this point what is happening
around him .

Bathsheba carries out her instructions, addressing these words to Dav id:
1 7 . My lord, y ou y ourself swore by the LORD y our God to y our serv ant,
“Solom on y our son shall be king after m e and he shall sit on m y throne.”
1 8. And now, look, Adonijah has becom e king, and m y lord the king
knows it not. 1 9 . And he has m ade a sacrificial feast of oxen and fatlings
and sheep in abundance and has inv ited all the king’s sons and Ebiathar
the priest and Joab com m ander of the arm y , but Solom on y our serv ant
he did not inv ite. 2 0. And y ou, m y lord king, the ey es of all Israel are
upon y ou to tell them who will sit on the throne of m y lord the king after
him . 2 1 . And it will com e about when m y lord the king lies with his
forefathers that I and m y son Solom on shall be held offenders.

It is a brilliant speech, in which Bathsheba repeats the lines Nathan has giv en
her but also expands them with the m ost persuasiv e inv entiv eness. The two-

1 27
word indication, malakh ʾAdoniyahu, Adonijah has becom e king, in v erse 1 1 ,
blossom s out into her rev iew of the usurper’s inv itation list for his feast, her
description of all Israel waiting breathlessly for the king’s pronouncem ent, and
her pathetic ev ocation of the fate that will soon attend her and her son if Dav id
fails to act. Ev en in what she repeats v erbatim from Nathan’s instructions, she
introduces one sm all but rev ealing addition: she claim s that Dav id swore to her
about Solom on’s succession “by the LORD [his] God,” which would indicate a
higher order of binding solem nity to the v ow. Perhaps Nathan as a m an of God
was nerv ous about taking His nam e in v ain (especially , of course, if the whole
idea of the pledge was a hoax) and so om itted that phrase from his instructions.
Dav id, carry ing this particular increm ental repetition a half-step further, will
announce to Bathsheba (after he has been persuaded by her and Nathan that he
did m ake such a v ow), “As I swore to y ou by the LORD God of Israel, ‘Solom on
y our son shall be king after m e ...’” (1 Kings 1 :3 0), giv ing that solem n v ow the
concluding flourish of an official proclam ation. In fact, Dav id steps up the term s
Bathsheba has presented to him by adding, “he shall sit on the throne in m y
stead,” which is to say , Solom on will assum e the throne at once, while his father
is still aliv e.

Nathan, faithful to the scenario he has sketched out, enters just at the point
when Bathsheba has conjured up her prospectiv e plight after Dav id’s dem ise.
Shrewdly , since he could not be presum ed to know of a pledge giv en by Dav id
directly to Bathsheba, he takes the precise v erbal form ulas of the supposed v ow
(which he has in fact just dictated to Bathsheba) and turns them into a barbed
question about Adonijah: “My lord the king, did y ou say , ‘Adonijah shall be king
after m e and he shall sit on m y throne’?” (1 Kings 1 :2 4 ). Then, without waiting
for an answer, he plunges into an account of the usurper’s politically designing
feast in which, following the pattern of increm ental repetition, som e pointed
details appear that were not present in Bathsheba’s v ersion:
2 5. For he has gone down today and m ade a sacrificial feast of oxen and
fatlings and sheep in abundance, and he has inv ited all the king’s sons
and the com m anders of the arm y and Ebiathar the priest, and there they
are eating and drinking before him , and they hav e said, “Long liv e King
Adonijah.” 2 6 . But m e—y our serv ant—and Zadok the priest and Benaiah
son of Jehoiada and Solom on y our serv ant, he did not inv ite.

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 The differences between Nathan’s v ersion and Bathsheba’s v ersion are
wonderfully in character for both. Bathsheba’s presentation rev eals the
distressed m other and suppliant wife em phasizing the injustice done to her son,
the im m inent danger threatening m other and son, the absolute dependence of
the nation on the powerful word of the king. Nathan, by what he adds, sharpens
the m ore general political aspects of the threat from Adonijah. In his repetition
of the shared script, it is not just Joab the com m ander but the whole m ilitary
elite that has been suborned by the pretender, and he has a fuller list of Dav id’s
faithful who hav e been set aside by Adonijah, beginning em phatically with “m e
y our serv ant” (Bathsheba prudently left Nathan out of her account) and closing
the series with a sy m m etrical counterpart, “Solom on y our serv ant.” Most
crucially , Nathan adds a little v ignette of Adonijah’s com pany eating and
drinking and shouting “Long liv e King Adonijah,” a scene certainly calculated
to rouse the ire of the still reigning king. In tactful contrast to the usurper’s
followers, Bathsheba at the end of this m eeting will say to the aged m onarch,
“May m y lord King Dav id liv e forev er.” The effect of this whole process of
repeating and adding is to ov erwhelm Dav id with a crescendo of argum ents.
Increm ental repetition, which in its m ore schem atic usages sim ply prov ides a
progressiv e intensification or elaboration of an initial statem ent, here has the
fullest dram atic and psy chological justification. It conv ey s, without the need for
explicit com m entary , aspects of the distinctiv e character of each of the
personages inv olv ed in the scene, and it becom es as well a conv incingly
effectiv e m eans of bringing about a change in the course of ev ents—for here as
elsewhere in the Bible, language m anifestly m akes things happen. 7

When, as in 1 Kings 1 , the intent of v aried repetition is a progressiv e effect,

noticeably large elem ents of new m aterial m ay be added to the repeated
statem ents. More ty pically , I think, when som e sort of rev ersal of an initial
im pression is intended, the m odification of perception is achiev ed through the
substitution, suppression, or addition of a single phrase, or through a strategic
change in the order of repeated item s. A sim ple exam ple of om ission used in this
way would be 1 Kings 1 2 , where Rehoboam ’s y oung friends adv ise him to
answer a popular dem and for lower taxes with the following words: “My little
finger is thicker than m y father’s loins. If m y father loaded y ou with a heav y

1 29
y oke, I will add to y our y oke. My father scourged y ou with whips, and I will
scourge y ou with scorpions” (1 Kings 1 2 :1 0–1 1 ). Rehoboam duly and
disastrously follows this hard line, repeating his adv isors’ words v erbatim to the
people, but he rev ealingly om its the hy perbolic com parison between his little
finger and his father’s loins (1 Kings 1 2 :1 4 ), wisely deciding not to com pound
his budgetary harshness by m aking extrav agant public claim s about his own
stature v is-àv is that of the deceased Solom on.

Variation in repetition is som etim es used to adum brate not a feature of

character but a dev elopm ent of plot. The effect this produces is thoroughly
characteristic of the Bible’s narrativ e art. In the kind of foreshadowing we are
m ore accustom ed to, an ev entual dénouem ent is anticipated by som e
m om entary insistence of action, im age, or narrator’s assertion. Julien Sorel
near the beginning of The Red and the Black enters a church where he finds a
scrap of printed paper reporting the execution of one Louis Jenrel, the anagram
of his own nam e, and as he leav es, the sunlight com ing through the red
curtains m akes the holy water look like blood—a trem olo note ty pical of the
conv ention of foreshadowing but, fortunately , not of Stendhal’s nov els. In the
Bible, on the other hand, terse understatem ent rem ains the norm , and future
turns of ev ents are adum brated by the slight, disturbing dissonance produced
when in a pattern of repetition som e am biguous phrase is substituted for a m ore
reassuring one. What is conv ey ed to the reader is a sublim inal intim ation of
things to com e rather than som e em phatic though obscure warning.

When, for exam ple, Manoah’s wife (Judges 1 3 ) is told by the angel that she
will conceiv e and bear a son, she repeats alm ost all the term s of the div ine
prom ise word for word to her husband, but she significantly changes the final
phrase of the annunciation. The angel had said, “The lad will be a Nazirite to
God from the wom b, and he will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines”
(Judg. 1 3 :5). In her repetition, the future m other of Sam son concludes, “The lad
will be a Nazirite to God from the wom b to his dy ing day ” (Judg. 1 3 :7 ). It is
surely a little unsettling that the prom ise that ended with the liberation—
though, pointedly , only the beginning of liberation—of Israel from its Philistine
oppressors now concludes with no m ention of “rescue” but instead of death.
From the wom b to the day of death is, of course, a prov erbial and neutral way of
say ing “all his life.” In context, howev er, the wom an’s silence on the explicit

1 30
prom ise of political salv ation and the counterpoising of the three-word phrase,
ʿad-yom moto, to the day of his death, against the echo of the whole clause on
the lad’s future career as a liberator, turn the substituted phrase into an
im plicit com m entary on the prophecy and restore to that final “death” a hint of
its independent negativ e force. The absence of the idea of liberation or rescue in
the wife’s v ersion would seem to be underscored when Manoah subsequently
questions the div ine m essenger about “what shall be the conduct of the lad and
his acts.” The angel, after all, has already giv en the answer to both parts of the
question in his words to Manoah’s wife, but the crucial inform ation about the
child’s future deeds was deleted from her report to Manoah. (Neither his wife
n or the angel, m oreov er, m entions the essential detail of not cutting the son’s
hair, as though it were a secret they shared and kept from Manoah.) In sum , the
dissonance of a single phrase subtly sets the scene for a powerful but spiritually
dubious sav ior of Israel who will end up sowing as m uch destruction as
salv ation.

Let m e offer one m ore exam ple of v aried repetition as a foreshadowing dev ice
because, occurring at a m om ent of m uch greater narrativ e suspense, it
illustrates how the folktale pattern of a whole series of exact repetitions
concluded by a rev ersal can be em ploy ed with considerable artistic
sophistication. In 2 Sam uel 3 , Abner, Saul’s com m ander-in-chief, decides to end
the long civ il war with the house of Dav id and com es to Dav id’s capital at
Hebron to confer with the warrior-king. After a feast and an am icable discussion
in which Abner pledges to win ov er all his people to the signing of a treaty and
the recognition of Dav id as king,
2 1 . Dav id sent Abner off and he went in peace [vayelekh beshalom]. 2 2 .
And, look, Dav id’s serv ants and Joab had com e from a raid, and abundant
booty they brought with them , and Abner was not with Dav id in Hebron,
for he had sent him off and he went in peace. 2 3 . As Joab and the force
that was with him had com e, and they told Joab, say ing, “Abner son of
Ner has com e to the king, and he sent him off, and he went in peace.” 2 4 .
And Joab cam e to the king and said: “What hav e y ou done? Look, Abner
has com e to y ou! Why did y ou send him off and he went, going off?”
[vayelekh halokh].

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 After three occurrences in rapid succession of a departure in peace, Joab’s
substitution of an intensify ing infinitiv e, to go, halokh, for beshalom, in peace,
falls like the clatter of a dagger after the ringing of bells. Joab say s “he went,
going off” instead of “he went in peace” partly because he is seething with anger
at the thought that Dav id actually let Abner go off when he had him in his
hands, partly because his own steely intention is to m ake sure that this going off
will not be in peace. Joab quickly proceeds to berate Dav id for giv ing aid and
com fort to the enem y who could hav e com e only to spy , then he rushes off
m essengers to call Abner back to Hebron. When the adv ersary com m ander
returns, Joab, this toughest of ancient Near Eastern m afiosi, draws Abner ov er
to the town gate and stabs him to death, thus av enging his brother Asahel,
killed in battle by Abner. By the tim e we arriv e at the rapid dénouem ent of the
episode, we m ay ev en wonder retrospectiv ely whether the breaking of the series
of repetitions with the infinitiv e of the v erb “to go” was not m erely to intensify
the m eaning of the v erb but to call attention to its possible application by Abner
in another sense—as a euphem ism for death. (For som e indication that this
secondary m eaning was current in biblical usage, see Job 2 7 :2 1 and Jerem iah
2 2 :1 0.) In any case, it should be clear that in order to grasp the full freight of
the character’s intention and the subtlety of narrativ e structure in such a
story , one m ust be alert ev en to the shift of a single word in what m ay first seem
a strictly form ulaic pattern.

Now, one m ight object that what I hav e been proposing as a sophisticated
conv ention of purposeful m inute v ariation of v erbatim repetition is in fact an
accidental product of ancient texts that som etim es repeated things word for
word, som etim es only approxim ately word for word. This is in essence the
objection raised by an Israeli Bible scholar, Yair Hoffm an, to a v iew of repetition
as a deliberate technique close to the one I hav e outlined here put forth in an
article by Meir Sternberg. 8 Hoffm an, because he can find instances in the Bible
of div ergence from v erbatim repetition in which no literary “m eaning” can be
conv incingly inferred, concludes that there is no way of em pirically prov ing
there was such a conv ention, and that all such readings can be dism issed as the
exercise of fanciful ingenuity . What this argum ent fails to recognize, of course,
is that v ery few literary conv entions are treated by writers as inv ariable and

1 32
hence obligatory without exception. This m ight be true of the requirem ent that
a sonnet hav e fourteen lines (though fifteen-line sonnets hav e actually been
written); but a far m ore ty pical conv ention would be, say , the introduction of a
fictional personage in a nineteenth-century nov el through a form al
“character”—a thum bnail sketch of phy sical and m oral traits. One m ay find all
sorts of div ergences from this m odel in the nov els of the age, but it is com m on
enough—it is used, let m e guess, in perhaps 7 0 percent of the cases where a new
character is introduced—to be a clearly recognizable conv ention, and against
the background of that conv ention we can better see how indiv idual writers
exercise their craft. It is by no m eans necessary to insist, then, that ev ery
biblical instance of a sm all v ariation in repeated phrases should y ield a
significance, for I think such significances can be persuasiv ely shown to be
present in enough cases—here 7 0 percent would be an extrem ely conserv ativ e
estim ate—to justify the inference that this was in fact an artful conv ention used
by writers and recognized by their readers.

Hoffm an m akes the interesting suggestion that the oscillation between

v erbatim strictness and looseness in the biblical use of repetition is a function of
historical circum stances. That is, strict form ulaic repetition was the literary
norm in Mesopotam ia to the east and in Ugarit to the north of biblical Israel,
while Egy ptian literature to the south was gov erned by no such practice.
Sim ilarly , the earlier biblical narrativ es, he claim s, include m uch m ore
v erbatim repetition, rem aining closer to their archaic Near Eastern literary
antecedents, while the later—that is, postexilic—narrativ es m ov e away from
the norm of repetition in consonance with the changing literary procedures of
the Near East in later antiquity . Hoffm an thus proposes that the v ariations
between strict and loose repetition are a consequence of the transition of biblical
narrativ e from one geographical pole to another and from one historical era to
another.

Historical inquiry m ight perhaps be able to confirm this intriguing

hy pothesis (though the role of Egy pt in the schem e is a bit problem atic), but
that, of course, would in no way refute the existence of this kind of phrasal
repetition as an artful conv ention. The conv entions of any literary corpus will
naturally reflect the contexts of literary history in which the corpus was
shaped. The golden age of narrativ e creation in biblical literature, when the

1 33
principal narrativ es of the Pentateuch and the Form er Prophets were produced,
was roughly from the tenth through the sev enth centuries BCE. It is quite
conceiv able that the Hebrew writers of this period felt a certain fluidity in the
norm of repetition they had inherited because they were caught in a broad
cultural m ov em ent of change, shifting, as it were, from early to late Near
Eastern antiquity —the proposed Egy ptian influence is questionable, except for
Prov erbs, where repetition in narrativ e is not an issue. If this was in fact the
case, the essential point is that they m ade out of the am biguities of their
literary -historical situation, as writers generally will, an occasion for
distinctiv e artistry , creating a conv ention of v erbatim repetition with strategic
v ariations that was extraordinary for its suppleness and its subtlety . Indeed, the
com plex achiev em ent of this great age of Hebrew narrativ e m ay in part be
attributed to the resources of this conv ention, which at least som e of the later,
postexilic Hebrew writers had largely abandoned, or no longer knew how to use.

Let m e try , by way of conclusion, to m ake the nature of that achiev em ent
clearer through two m ore elaborate illustrations in which a carefully
orchestrated ensem ble of repetitiv e dev ices prov ides the com plex structure for
an entire story . The two exam ples are com plem entary opposites in the spectrum
of repetitiv e narration, one building on repeated key words and actions, with
only certain them atic phrases and a bit of dialogue restated v erbatim , the other
an intricate tapestry of literally repeated, intertwined, and ingeniously
reordered statem ents. The first exam ple illustrates the reiterativ e dev ices of
repetition; the second exam ple, while putting reiterativ e dev ices to excellent
use, is chiefly an instance of phrasal repetition, where we are inv ited to attend
to em erging differences in seem ing restatem ents.

My first exam ple, the story of Balaam , the gentile prophet (Num bers 2 2 :2 –
2 4 :2 5), is unfortunately too long to com m ent on here v erse by v erse, but I shall
try to show how it works through a sum m ary analy sis. The second exam ple, the
attem pted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 3 9 ), is m ore com pact
and by v irtue of the way it uses repetition will require closer attention to details
of the text.

The v ery first word in the Hebrew of the Balaam story is the v erb “to see”
(Num . 2 2 :2 ), which appropriately becom es, with som e sy nony m s, the m ain

1 34
Leitwort in this tale about the nature of prophecy or v ision. First Balak, king of
Moab, sees what Israel has done to the Am orites; later Balaam , in a clim actic
series of v isions, will see Israel sprawling out below him in a v ast spatial
perspectiv e (“From the top of the crags do I see them / and from the hills do I
gaze on them ” [Num . 2 3 :9 ]), which, in the last of his prophecies, becom es a
tem poral perspectiv e of foreseeing (“I see him , but not y et now, / I gaze on him ,
but not in tim e close” [Num . 2 4 :1 7 ]). Balaam prefaces his last two prophecies
with a form ulaic affirm ation of his prowess as a professional clairv oy ant or
ecstatic seer: “Utterance of Balaam , Beor’s son, / utterance of the m an open-
ey ed, / utterance of him who hears El’s say ings, / who the v ision of Shaddai
beholds, / prostrate with ey es unv eiled” (Num . 2 4 :3 –4 ). All this accom plished
hullabaloo of v isionary practice stands in ironic contrast, of course, to the
spectacle of Balaam persistently blind to the presence of an angel his ass can
plainly see, until God chooses to “unv eil his ey es” (Num . 2 2 :3 1 ).

This steady insistence on God as the exclusiv e source of v ision is

com plem ented by reiterated phrase-m otifs bearing on the disposition of
blessings and curses. Balak sends for Balaam to put a hex on Israel because in his
pagan naiv eté he believ es, as he say s to Balaam , that “Whom y ou bless is
blessed / And whom y ou curse is cursed” (Num . 2 2 :6 ). God Him self is quick to
set m atters straight in a night-v ision to Balaam in which He uses the sam e two
v erb-stem s (Num . 2 2 :1 2 ): “You shall not curse the people, for it is blessed.” A
whole series of changes is rung on the curse-blessing opposition, both in
Balaam ’s v isionary v erse and in the exasperated dialogues between him and
Balak. The appropriate them atic conclusion is explicitly m ade by Balaam in the
pream ble to his first prophecy (Num . 2 3 :7 –8): “From Aram did Balak lead m e,
/ the king of Moab, from the eastern m ountains: / Go, curse m e Jacob, / and go,
doom Israel. / What can I curse that El has not cursed, / and what can I doom
that the LORD has not doom ed?” These v erses interestingly illustrate how the
prosodic repetitions of poetic parallelism can be effectiv ely interwov en with the
them atic repetition of phrases in the prose. It is im portant that Balaam is a poet
as well as a seer, for the story is ultim ately concerned with whether language
confers or confirm s blessings and curses, and with the source of the power of
language.

It is particularly the structure of parallel actions in the Balaam story that

1 35
dem onstrates how, in contrast to the com plaints of Voltaire and others, the
Bible’s polem ic m onotheism can produce high com edy . Balaam goes riding off on
his ass to answer Balak’s inv itation. In the fam iliar folktale pattern, there are
three occurrences of the sam e incident, the ass shy ing away from the sword-
brandishing angel Balaam cannot see, each tim e with a m ore discom fiting effect
on her rider: first he is carried into a field, then he is squeezed against a wall,
and finally the ass sim ply lies down under him . When he begins to beat her
furiously for the third tim e, the LORD “opens up her m outh” (elsewhere Balaam
repeatedly insists that he can speak only “what the LORD puts in m y m outh”),
and she com plains “What hav e I done to y ou that y ou should hav e struck m e
these three tim es?” (Num . 2 2 :2 8). The author, one notes, m akes a point of
calling our attention to the three tim es, for the num ber will be im portant in the
second half of the story . Balaam in his wrath hardly seem s to notice the
m iraculous gift of speech but responds as though he were accustom ed to hav ing
daily dom estic wrangles with his asses (Num . 2 2 :2 9 ): “Because y ou hav e toy ed
with m e. HadIasword in m y hand, I would hav e killed y ou.” (The Midrash Be-
Midbar Rabbah, 2 0:2 1 , shrewdly notes the irony of Balaam ’s wanting a sword to
kill an ass when he has set out to destroy a whole nation with his words alone.)
Meanwhile, of course, the unseen angel has been standing by , sword in hand.
Only when God chooses finally to rev eal to Balaam the arm ed angel standing in
the way does the irate seer repent for ill-treating the innocent creature.

It seem s fairly clear that the ass in this episode play s the role of Balaam —
beholding div ine v isions with ey es unv eiled—to Balaam ’s Balak. The parallel
between the two halv es of the story is em phasized by the fact that in Balaam ’s
prophecies there are again three sy m m etrically arranged occurrences of the
sam e incident, each tim e with greater discom fit to Balak. In Balaam ’s prophetic
im agery , first Israel is spread out like dust, then crouched like a lion, and finally
rises like a star, so that the Moabite king, waiting for a first-class im precation, is
progressiv ely reduced to im potent fury , quite in the m anner of Balaam ’s blind
rage against the way ward ass.

Now, a sequence of repeated actions in such a folktale pattern is of course a

m echanical thing, and part of the genius of the biblical author here is to realize,
three m illennia before Bergson’s form ulation of the principle, that the
m echanical in hum an affairs is a prim ary source of com edy . Balak’s and

1 36
Balaam ’s repetitions are m uch m ore elaborate than those of Balaam with the
ass: each of the three tim es, Balaam instructs Balak to build sev en altars and to
sacrifice on them sev en oxen and sev en sheep, as the distraught king trundles
him around from one lofty lookout point to the next; each tim e, the painstaking
preparations result only in heightened frustration for Balak. Paganism , with its
notion that div ine powers can be m anipulated by a caste of professionals
through a set of carefully prescribed procedures, is trapped in the reflexes of a
m echanistic worldv iew while from the biblical perspectiv e reality is in fact
controlled by the will of an om nipotent God bey ond all hum an m anipulation.
The contrast between these two conflicting conceptions of reality is brilliantly
brought forth in the story ’s artful pattern of repetitions. In each repeated
instance, the Moabite king and his hired prophet go through identical
preparations, and each tim e Balaam speaks in soaring v erse—the words God has
put in his m outh—which constitutes a crescendo repetition of powerful v ision in
counterpoint to the m echanical repetition of their futile hum an actions. The
harm ony of theological argum ent and narrativ e art in the whole story is
beautifully com plete.

The narrator in Num bers 2 2 –2 4 deploy s repetitiv e patterns in broad, bold

strokes. The narrator of Genesis 3 9 indicates them in a series of finer, m ore
m inutely interrelated m ov em ents:
1 . And Joseph was brought down to Egy pt, and Potiphar, courtier of
Pharaoh, the high cham berlain, bought him from the hands of the
Ishm aelites who had brought him down there. 2 . And the LORD was with
Joseph, and he was a successful m an [ʾish matzliaḥ], and he was in the
house of his Egy ptian m aster. 3 . And his m aster saw that the LORD was
with him , and all that he did the LORD m ade succeed [matzliaḥ] in his
hand, 4 . and Joseph found fav or in his ey es and he m inistered to him , and
he put him in charge of his house, and all that he had he placed in his
hands. 5. And it happened from the tim e he put him in charge of his
house and of all he had, that the LORD blessed the Egy ptian’s house for
Joseph’s sake, and the LORD’s blessing was on all that he had in house and
field. 6 . And he left all that he had he left in Joseph’s hands, and he gav e
no thought to any thing with him there sav e the bread he ate. And Joseph
was com ely in features and com ely to look at.

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 These six v erses are the introductory fram e for Joseph’s encounter with his
m aster’s wife, setting the scene for it not only in regard to narrativ e data but
also in the announcing of form al them es. The reiterated v erbal m otifs function
like the statem ent of m usical them es at the beginning of the first m ov em ent of a
classical sy m phony . Joseph is successful (matzliah as an intransitiv e) and God
m akes him succeed (matzliaḥ as a causativ e v erb). God repeatedly “is with”
Joseph, a con dition that clearly relates to success as cause to effect and that,
spreading from the m an to whatev er he touches, m anifests itself as blessing. The
word “all” (kol) is insisted upon fiv e tim es, clearly exceeding the norm of
biblical repetition and thus calling attention to itself as a them atic assertion:
the scope of blessing or success this m an realizes is v irtually unlim ited;
ev ery thing prospers, ev ery thing is entrusted to him . On a m iniature scale, we
hav e a confirm ation of his own grandiose dream s and an adum bration of his
future glory as v izier of Egy pt. The seem ingly incongruous last clause of the
fram e, which appears in the Hebrew parataxis as an equal m em ber of the
sequence of parallel statem ents that it concludes, is a signal of warning in the
m idst of blessing that Joseph m ay suffer from one endowm ent too m any . We are
now prepared for the entrance of Potiphar’s wife:
7 . And it happened after these things that his m aster’s wife raised her
ey es to Joseph and said, “Lie with m e.” 8. And he refused. And he said to
his m aster’s wife, “Look, m y m aster has giv en no thought with m e here to
what is in the house, and all that he has he has placed in m y hands. 9 . He
is not greater in this house than I, and he has held back nothing from m e
except y ou, as y ou are his wife, and how could I do this great ev il and giv e
offense to God?” 1 0. And so she spoke to Joseph day after day , and he
would not listen to her, to lie by her, to be with her. 1 1 . And it happened,
on one such day , that he cam e into the house to perform his work, and
there was no m an of the m en of the house there in the house. 1 2 . And she
seized him by his garm ent, say ing, “Lie with m e.” And he left his
garm ent in her hand and he fled and went out. 1 3 . And so, when she saw
that he had left his garm ent in her hand and fled outside, 1 4 . she called
out to the people of the house and said to them , say ing, “See, he has
brought us a Hebrew m an to play with us [or, to m ock us]. He cam e into

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 m e to lie with m e, but I called out in a loud v oice, 1 5. and so, when he
heard m e raise m y v oice and call out, he left his garm ent by m e and fled
and went out.” 1 6 . And she laid out his garm ent by her until his m aster
returned to his house. 1 7 . And she spoke to him things of this sort, say ing,
“The Hebrew slav e cam e into m e, whom y ou brought us, to play with m e.
1 8. And so, when I raised m y v oice and called out, he left his garm ent by
m e and fled outside.” 1 9 . And it happened, when his m aster heard his
wife’s words which she spoke to him , say ing, “Things of this sort y our
slav e has done to m e,” he becam e incensed. 2 0. And Joseph’s m aster took
him and placed him in the prison-house, the place where the king’s
prisoners were held, and he was there in the prison-house.

The first appearance of dialogue in the entire story is the naked directness,
without prelim inaries or explanations, of the wife’s sexual proposition,
presented alm ost as though these two words (in the Hebrew) were all she ev er
spoke to Joseph, day after day (v erse 1 0), until finally the plain m eaning of the
words is translated into the phy sical act of grabbing the m an (v erse 1 2 ). By
contrast, Joseph’s refusal (v erses 8–9 ) is a v oluble outpouring of language, full
of repetitions that are both dram atically appropriate—as a loy al serv ant, he is
em phatically protesting the m oral scandal of the deed proposed—and
them atically pointed. The key word “all” is picked up from the fram e and used
to stress the com prehensiv eness of the responsibility that has been entrusted to
Joseph. Another them atic word associated with Joseph’s trust, “house,” which
also appears fiv e tim es in the fram e-v erses, is used twice by him here, and
figures prom inently through the rest of his story . When the m aster com es hom e
in v erse 1 6 , he “returns to his house,” and it is of course the usurpation of the
m aster’s role and his house that the wife im plicitly encourages in propositioning
Joseph. Reinforcing this them e through still another strategy of v erbal
reiteration, the writer takes adv antage of ev ery occasion to refer to the
Egy ptian candidate for cuckoldry as “his [Joseph’s] m aster” and to the
concupiscent lady as “his [Potiphar’s] wife.”

It is in the account of the attem pted sexual assault, howev er, that the
v erbatim repetition of whole phrases and clauses becom es crucial to the story .

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When Joseph flees (v erse 1 2 ), “he left his garm ent in her hand,” an exact echo,
ironically wrenched from a context of trust to one of conjugal betray al, of v erse
6 : “All that he had he left in Joseph’s hands” (in the Hebrew, yad, hand, is
singular in all its occurrences in the chapter). Verse 1 3 literally repeats the
entire last sentence of v erse 1 2 (om itting only one reinforcing v erb) for two
reasons: the repetition arrests for our attention the critical ev idential fact of the
garm ent in her hand, which is followed (v erse 1 4 ) by her “calling out”; and it
prov ides a fine m om ent of suspended narrativ e progress, while we wait to hear
what m ov e she can possibly dev ise to get out of this com prom ising situation.
Her story to the household serv ants clev erly enlists their sy m pathies against
the foreigner who constitutes a sexual threat and an insult to them all (he has
been brought “to play with/dally with/m ock us” in the pun of letzaḥeq banu)
and is m eant to incite them against the husband who has introduced this
dangerous alien presence in their m idst. Because she uses precisely the sam e
series of phrases in her speech (v erses 1 4 –1 5) that had been used twice just
before by the narrator (v erses 1 2 –1 3 ) but rev erses their order, so that her
calling out now precedes Joseph’s flight, the blatancy of her lie is forcefully
conv ey ed without com m entary . That blatancy is ev en m ore sharply focused
through the change of a single word in one phrase she repeats from the
preceding narration. As we noted, the act of leav ing som ething in som eone’s
hand is giv en particular em phasis because it echoes v erbatim the leav ing,
giv ing, entrusting in Joseph’s hands stressed in the fram e-v erses. In the v ersion
of Potiphar’s wife, the incrim inating beyadah, “in her hand,” of v erses 1 2 and
1 3 , is quietly transform ed in v erse 1 5 into ʾetzli, “by m e,” so that Joseph will
appear to hav e disrobed quite v oluntarily as a prelim inary to rape. Joseph, of
course, is again linked with the m isleading ev idence of a garm ent, as he was
when his brothers brought the blood-soaked tunic to his father. The wife
carefully places the garm ent “by her” (v erse 1 6 ) as an arranged prop for the
story she will now repeat to her husband when he returns. (The Midrash
Bereishit Rabbah 87 :1 0 m akes the brilliant if som ewhat fanciful observ ation on
the narrativ e specification of this lay ing-by of the garm ent that she spent the
tim e kissing and caressing it.)

When she finally speaks to her husband, her v irtual repetition is once m ore a
studied rearrangem ent of phrases. In addressing the serv ants, she had begun

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with the contem ptuous reference to her husband’s bringing a Hebrew fellow to
dally with them . Now, she starts (v erse 1 7 ) with the shock of “The Hebrew slav e
cam e into m e,” which, by itself, could easily be taken to m ean, in good biblical
idiom , “had sex with m e.” Then she qualifies, “whom y ou brought us, to play
with m e.” This lady who before had exhibited a speech-repertoire of two carnal
words here shows herself a subtle m istress of sy ntactic equiv ocation. In her
words to the serv ants, the husband had unam biguously brought the Hebrew “to
play with us.” When she repeats the whole short clause in direct address to her
husband, she places it so that it could be read in two way s: “the slav e cam e to
m e—the one y ou brought us—to play with m e”; or, “the slav e cam e to m e, the
one y ou brought us to play with m e.” (The Hebrew text, of course, offers no
clarify ing punctuation.) The second reading obv iously would be a sharp rebuke
to the husband, suggesting that he had perv ersely inv ited trouble by
introducing such a sexual m enace into the household, but the wife is cunning
enough to word the accusation in such a way that he will be left the choice of
taking it as a direct rebuke or as only an im plicit and m ild one. One should also
note that in her words to the other serv ants (or slav es) Joseph was called a
“m an,” while in restating this to her husband, she is careful to identify the
Hebrew as “slav e,” thus prov oking the wrath of a m aster who should feel that a
trust has been v iolated and that the m ost lowly has presum ed to assault the
m ost high. 9

Otherwise, in her v ersion to the husband she once m ore repeats the ly ing
rearrangem ent of the sequence of phrases, the crucial substitution of “by m e”
for “in m y hand,” and the-lady -doth-protest-too-m uch insistence of her own
raising of the v oice and scream ing. Am usingly , the scream ing now no longer
appears as an independent clause—“I called out in a loud v oice”—but becom es an
assum ed action reduced to a subordinate clause—“when I raised m y v oice and
called out [as of course I would do, being a v irtuous wom an].” The definition of
character and relationship through repetition in dialogue is dazzlingly effectiv e.
The husband witlessly responds just as she has coolly calculated, Joseph is
thrown into prison, and we are giv en three fram e-v erses that close off the story ,
carefully balancing the fram e-v erses at the beginning:
2 1 . And the LORD was with Joseph and extended kindness to him , and
granted him fav or in the ey es of the prison-house warden. 2 2 . And the

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 prison-house warden placed in Joseph’s hands all the prisoners who were
in the prison-house, and all that they were to do there, it was he who did
it. 2 3 . And the prison-house warden had to see to nothing that was in his
hands, as the LORD was with him , and whatev er he did, the LORD m ade
succeed.

These final v erses are a trium ph of form al com position. Though Joseph has
been cast into another kind of pit, the grand recapitulation of v erbal m otifs
m akes it clear that the rhy thm of blessing that is his destiny is once m ore
asserting itself. “And he was in the prison-house” (end of v erse 2 0) just as “he
was in the house of his Egy ptian m aster” (end of v erse 2 ) before. (I hav e
translated beyt-sohar as “prison-house,” despite a slight awkwardness, in order
to retain the way the Hebrew continues the m otif of the house and the blessing
conferred on it by Joseph’s presence through to the conclusion of the story .)
Once again, God “is with” Joseph, so that he finds fav or—or here, in a slight
v ariation of the idiom , is literally “giv en” fav or—in the ey es of his Egy ptian
m aster. Once again, “all” is entrusted to him , placed “in his hands” (a final
correctiv e rev ersal of the garm ent left “in the hand” of the fem ale assailant). In
v erse 6 , Potiphar “gav e no thought to any thing” because of the confidence he
placed in Joseph; here, the warden “had to see to nothing” for exactly the sam e
reason. This essential pattern of total trust will receiv e its ultim ate
confirm ation when Pharaoh places the adm inistration of the entire country in
the hands of Joseph. The form ula of the LORD’s being with Joseph that
introduced the whole account of his activ ities in Egy pt (v erse 2 ) now recurs
near the end of the concluding v erse of the episode, and the v ery last word of the
story is, m ost appropriately , matzliaḥ, “m ake succeed.”

All these v aried instances of artful repetition reflect in different way s an

underly ing assum ption of biblical narrativ e. Language in the biblical stories is
nev er conceiv ed as a transparent env elope of the narrated ev ents or an
aesthetic em bellishm ent of them but as an integral and dy nam ic com ponent—
an insistent dim ension—of what is being narrated. With language God creates
the world; through language He rev eals His design in history to m en. There is a
suprem e confidence in an ultim ate coherence of m eaning through language

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that inform s the biblical v ision. When the action and speech of m en and wom en,
alway s seen in som e fateful course of conv ergence with or div ergence from
div ine instruction, are reported to us in biblical narrativ e, repetition
continually sets their liv es into an intricate patterning of words. Again and
again, we becom e aware of the power of words to m ake things happen. God or
one of His interm ediaries or a purely hum an authority speaks: m an m ay repeat
and fulfill the words of rev elation, repeat and delete, repeat and transform ; but
alway s there is the original urgent m essage to contend with, a m essage that in
the potency of its concrete v erbal form ulation does not allow itself to be
forgotten or ignored. On the hum an plane, a m aster speaks (for spiritual and
social hierarchy is im plicit in this patterning), his serv ant is called upon to
repeat through enactm ent; and, m ost frequent of all, an action is reported by
the narrator, then its protagonist recounts the action in v irtually the sam e
term s, the discrepancy between “v irtually ” and “exactly ” prov iding the finely
calibrated m easure of the character’s problem atic subjectiv e v iewpoint. As
hum an actors reshape recurrence in language along the biases of their own
intentions or m isconceptions, we see how language can be an instrum ent of
m asking or deception as well as of rev elation; y et ev en in such deflected form we
witness language repeatedly ev incing the power to translate itself into history ,
a history whose v ery substance seem s som etim es m en and their actions,
som etim es the language they use.

Bey ond this constant interplay through repetition between speech and
narration, biblical personages and ev ents are caught in a finer web of
reiteration in the design of them atic words and phrases constantly recurring.
No act or gesture is incidental and the sequence of ev ents is nev er fortuitous.
Joseph m ay m ov e swiftly from slav e-carav an to m anorhouse to prison to
palace: through it all, the strong punctuation of v erbal m otifs repeatedly
signals to us the direction in which he is headed, the purpose of his arduous
path. The hum an figures in the large biblical landscape act as free agents out of
the im pulses of a m em orable and often fiercely assertiv e indiv iduality , but the
actions they perform all ultim ately fall into the sy m m etries and recurrences of
God’s com prehensiv e design. (The com prehensiv eness of the design, it should be
said, is m ost palpable in the P docum ents and seem s m ore interm ittent in J and
other sources.) Finally , it is the inescapable tension between hum an freedom

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and div ine historical plan that is brought forth so lum inously through the
perv asiv e repetitions of the Bible’s narrativ e art.

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 6

Characterization and the Art of Reticence

HOW DOES THE Bible m anage to ev oke such a sense of depth and com plexity in
its representation of character with what would seem to be such sparse, ev en
rudim entary m eans? Biblical narrativ e offers us, after all, nothing in the way
of m inute analy sis of m otiv e or detailed rendering of m ental processes;
whatev er indications we m ay be v ouchsafed of feeling, attitude, or intention are
rather m inim al; and we are giv en only the barest hints about the phy sical
appearance, the tics and gestures, the dress and im plem ents of the characters,
the m aterial m ilieu in which they enact their destinies. In short, all the
indicators of nuanced indiv iduality to which the Western literary tradition has
accustom ed us—preem inently in the nov el, but ultim ately going back to the
Greek epics and rom ances—would appear to be absent from the Bible. In what
way , then, is one to explain how, from these laconic texts, figures like Rebekah,
Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Tam ar, Moses, Saul, Dav id, and Ruth em erge, characters
who, bey ond any archety pal role they m ay play as bearers of a div ine m andate,
hav e been etched as indelibly v iv id indiv iduals in the im agination of a hundred
generations?

It is true enough to say , as Erich Auerbach and others hav e done, that the
sparely sketched foreground of biblical narrativ e som ehow im plies a large
background dense with possibilities of interpretation, but the critical issue here
is the specific m eans through which that “som ehow” is achiev ed. Though
biblical narrativ e is often silent where later m odes of fiction will choose to be
loquacious, it is selectiv ely silent in a purposeful way : about different
personages, or about the sam e personages at different junctures of the
narration, or about different aspects of their thought, feeling, behav ior. I would
suggest, in fact, that the biblical writers, while seem ing to preserv e a
continuity with the relativ ely sim ple treatm ent of character of their
Mesopotam ian and Sy ro-Canaanite literary predecessors, actually worked out a
set of new and surprisingly supple techniques for the im aginativ e
representation of hum an indiv iduality .

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 Since art does not dev elop in a v acuum , these literary techniques m ust be
associated with the conception of hum an nature im plicit in biblical m onotheism
(though the inflections of m onotheism v ary am ong the different biblical
sources): ev ery person is created by an allseeing God but abandoned to his or her
own unfathom able freedom , m ade in God’s likeness as a m atter of cosm ogonic
principle but alm ost nev er as a m atter of accom plished ethical fact; and each
indiv idual instance of this bundle of paradoxes, encom passing the zenith and
the nadir of the created world, requires a special cunning attentiv eness in
literary representation. The purposeful selectiv ity of m eans, the repeatedly
contrastiv e or com parativ e technical strategies used in the rendering of biblical
characters, are in a sense dictated by the biblical v iew of m an.

All this will becom e clearer through illustration. I would like to focus on a
series of related passages from the story of Dav id, the m ost com plex and
elaborately presented of biblical characters. A consideration of the entire
literary portrait of Dav id would take far too m uch space, but in order to see how
the Bible’s artful selectiv ity produces both sharply defined surfaces and a sense
of am biguous depths in character, it will suffice to follow Dav id’s unfolding
relationship with his wife Michal, which also inv olv es his relation to Saul, to his
subsequent wiv es, and to his m en. Michal is introduced into the narrativ e
shortly after Dav id, a y oung m an from the prov incial town of Bethlehem , has
m ade his debut as a m ilitary hero and won the adulation of the people (1
Sam uel 1 8). We hav e just been inform ed, in a pointed pun, that the spirit of the
LORD, now with Dav id, has “turned away ” from Saul and that the troubled
king has “turned Dav id away ” from his presence by sending him into battle as a
front-line com m ander. What follows is worth quoting at length because, as the
initial presentation of Dav id and Michal’s relationship, it offers a sm all
spectrum of nicely differentiated m eans of characterization:
1 4 . And Dav id succeeded in all his way s, and the LORD was with him . 1 5.
And Saul saw that he was v ery successful, and he dreaded him . 1 6 . But
all Israel and Judah lov ed Dav id, for he led them into the fray . 1 7 . And
Saul said to Dav id, “Here is m y eldest daughter, Merab. Her shall I giv e
y ou as a wife. Only be a v aliant fellow for m e and fight the battles of the
LORD.” And Saul had thought, “Let not m y hand be against him , let the
hand of the Philistines be against him .” 1 8. And Dav id said to Saul, “Who

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 am I and who are m y kin, m y father’s clan in Israel, that I should be the
king’s son-in-law?” 1 9 . And it happened at the tim e for giv ing Merab the
daughter of Saul to Dav id, that she was giv en to Adriel the Meholathite as
wife. 2 0. And Michal the daughter of Saul lov ed Dav id, and they told
Saul, and the thing was pleasing in his ey es. 2 1 . And Saul thought, “I
shall giv e her to him , that she m ay be a snare to him , and the hand of the
Philistines m ay be against him .” And Saul said to Dav id, “Through the
second one y ou can be m y son-in-law now.” 2 2 . And Saul charged his
serv ants: “Speak to Dav id discreetly , say ing, ‘Look, the king desires y ou,
and all his serv ants lov e y ou, and now then, becom e son-in-law to the
king.’” 2 3 . And Saul’s serv ants spoke these words in Dav id’s hearing and
Dav id said, “Is it a light thing in y our ey es to becom e son-in-law to the
king, and I am a poor m an, and lightly esteem ed?” 2 4 . And Saul’s
serv ants told him , say ing, “Words of this sort Dav id has spoken.” 2 5. And
Saul said, “Thus shall y ou say to Dav id: ‘The king has no desire for any
bride price except a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take v engeance
against the king’s enem ies.’” And Saul had dev ised to m ake Dav id fall by
the hand of the Philistines. 2 6 . And Saul’s serv ants told these words to
Dav id, and the thing was pleasing in Dav id’s ey es, to becom e son-in-law to
the king. And the tim e was not done, 2 7 . when Dav id arose and went, he
and his m en, and he struck down am ong the Philistines two hundred
m en, and Dav id brought back their foreskins and m ade a full count to the
king, to becom e son-in-law to the king, and Saul gav e him Michal his
daughter as a wife. 2 8. And Saul saw and m arked that the LORD was
with Dav id, and Michal the daughter of Saul lov ed him . 2 9 . And Saul was
all the m ore afraid of Dav id, and Saul becam e Dav id’s constant enem y .
3 0. And the Philistine captains sallied forth, and whenev er they sallied
forth, Dav id succeeded m ore than all Saul’s serv ants, and his nam e
becam e greatly esteem ed.

Now, in reliable third-person narrations, such as in the Bible, there is a scale

of m eans, in ascending order of explicitness and certainty , for conv ey ing
inform ation about the m otiv es, the attitudes, the m oral nature of characters.
Character can be rev ealed through the report of actions; through appearance,

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gestures, posture, costum e; through one character’s com m ents on another;
through direct speech by the character; through inward speech, either
sum m arized or quoted as interior m onologue; or through statem ents by the
narrator about the attitudes and intentions of the personages, which m ay com e
either as flat assertions or m otiv ated explanations.

The lower end of this scale—character rev ealed through actions or appearance
—leav es us substantially in the realm of inference. The m iddle categories,
inv olv ing direct speech either by a character him self or by others about him ,
lead us from inference to the weighing of claim s. Although a character’s own
statem ents m ight seem a straightforward enough rev elation of who he or she is
and what he or she m akes of things, in fact the biblical writers are quite as
aware as any Jam es or Proust that speech m ay reflect the occasion m ore than
the speaker, m ay be m ore a drawn shutter than an open window. With the
report of inward speech, we enter the realm of relativ e certainty about
character: there is certainty , in any case, about the character’s conscious
intentions, though we m ay still feel free to question the m otiv e behind the
intention. Finally , at the top of the ascending scale, we hav e the reliable
narrator’s explicit statem ent of what the characters feel, intend, desire; here we
are accorded certainty , though biblical narrativ e, as the passage before us
dem onstrates, m ay choose for its own good purposes either to explain the
ascription of attitude or to state it baldly and thus leav e its cause as an enigm a
for us to ponder.

With all this in m ind, if we return to our passage from 1 Sam uel 1 8, we can
readily see how the writer, far from being com m itted to a m onolithic or
“prim itiv e” m ethod of characterization, shrewdly v aries his m eans of
presentation from one personage to the next. Like m any biblical episodes, the
passage has a form al fram e: Dav id is said to be em inently successful, which is
both proof and consequence of God’s being with him , and im m ensely popular
because of his success, both at the beginning of the episode and at the end; and if,
as I would assum e, this passage was written later than Genesis 3 9 , the story of
Joseph, another precocious high achiev er in trouble, it probably alludes to that
chapter from Genesis, which is sim ilarly fram ed by v erses at the beginning and
end that stress the hero’s success, God’s being with him , and his popularity . In
any case, the fram e-v erses here tell us som ething about Dav id’s div ine election

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to the newly created throne of Israel, but nothing about his m oral character,
and one of the m ost probing general perceptions of the biblical writers is that
there is often a tension, som etim es perhaps ev en an absolute contradiction,
between election and m oral character. But it is im portant for the writer to leav e
this tension under a shadow of am biguity in order to suggest a com plex sense of
Dav id the priv ate person and public m an. Dav id, then, rem ains a com plete
opacity in this episode, while Saul is a total transparency and Michal a sliv er of
transparency surrounded by darkness.

The m eans of presenting Saul are drawn from the top of our ascending scale of
certainties. The narrator tells us exactly what Saul feels toward Dav id—fear—
and why he feels it—Dav id’s astonishing m ilitary success (in this instance, the
parataxis of “Saul saw ... and he dreaded him ” is a clear causal indication). We
are giv en Saul’s decorous public speech to Dav id (v erse 1 7 ), but his words are
im m ediately com m ented on and exposed by a rev elation of his inward speech in
which he plots Dav id’s death. (In the Hebrew, these transitions from outward to
inward speech are effected m ore elegantly and m ore pointedly because the sam e
v erb, ʾamr, is used to introduce both actual speech and thought or intention.)
The next discussion of betrothal between Saul and Dav id (v erse 2 1 ) neatly
rev erses this order: first we get the interior m onologue of the plotting king, then
his decorous statem ent to the intended v ictim of his schem e. By the tim e we are
giv en Saul’s words to be conv ey ed by his henchm en, who are probably not
conscious accom plices, to Dav id, we know exactly what is behind those words.

As elsewhere in the Bible, attention is directed toward the use of language as a

m edium of m anipulation. To m ake sure that we do not forget ev en m om entarily
just what Saul is up to, the narrator interv enes in his own v oice in the second
half of v erse 2 5, after Saul’s stipulation of bride-price, to tell us what the king’s
real intention is. The transparency of presentation m ight ev en be intended to
im ply a transparency in Saul’s efforts as a Machiav ellian schem er: he is a
sim ple character, inclined to clum sy lunges rather than deft thrusts, and
perhaps for that reason not political enough to retain the throne. Does Dav id
him self see through the king’s schem e and decide to play along because he is
confident he can ov ercom e all dangers and bring back the gory bride-price? This
is one of sev eral key determ inations concerning the characters about which the
text leads us to speculate without prov iding sufficient inform ation to draw any

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certain conclusions.

Michal leaps out of the v oid as a nam e, a significant relation (Saul’s

daughter), and an em otion (her lov e for Dav id). This lov e, twice stated here, is
bound to hav e special salience because it is the only instance in all biblical
narrativ e in which we are explicitly told that a wom an lov es a m an. But unlike
Saul’s fear, Michal’s lov e is stated entirely without m otiv ated explanation; this
does not m ean, of course, that it is inexplicable, only that the writer wants us to
conjecture about it. The people lov e Dav id because of his brilliance on the
battlefield; Michal m ight lov e him for the sam e reason, or for qualities not y et
intim ated, or because of aspects of her own character about which we will begin
to guess only later.

The m eans used to represent Dav id, m eanwhile, are deliberately lim ited to
the lower and m iddle range of our ascending scale of certainties. We know in a
general way about his actions in battle, we know what others feel about him ,
but there is no ascription of feeling, as in the case of Michal, no rev elation of
interior speech and intention, as with Saul. What we are giv en is Dav id’s
speech, first to Saul, later to Saul’s interm ediaries. These are strictly public
occasions, and the words Dav id chooses for them are properly diplom atic.
Indeed, one of the m ost striking aspects of the entire Dav id story is that until his
career reaches its crucial breaking point with his m urder-by -proxy of Uriah
after his adultery with Bathsheba, alm ost all his speeches are in public
situations and can be read as politically m otiv ated. It is only after the death of
the child born of his union with Bathsheba that the personal v oice of a shaken
Dav id begins to em erge. 1

What does Dav id feel, what is he really thinking, when he responds to Saul or
to Saul’s spokesm en? Does he genuinely feel hum ble as a poor Bethlehem ite
farm boy suddenly taken up by the court? Is he m erely following the expected
effusiv e form ulas of court language in these gestures of self-effacem ent before
the king? Or, guessing the king’s intention but confident he has a stronger hand
to play than Saul realizes, is he through his protestations of unworthiness being
careful not to appear too eager to m arry into the roy al fam ily because of what
such a desire m ight suggest about his political am bitions? The narrator leav es
these v arious “readings” of Dav id hov ering by presenting his public utterance

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without com m ent, and in this way is able to suggest the fluctuating or m ultiple
nature of m otiv es in this prim e biblical instance of m an as a political anim al.
One or all of these considerations m ight explain Dav id’s words; precisely by not
specify ing, the narrator allows each its claim .

The subsequent episodes of the Dav id-Michal story consistently m aintain this
studied effect of opacity in the presentation of the warrior-king and m ay be
touched on m ore briefly . In the next chapter (1 Sam uel 1 9 ), Saul sends his
henchm en to Dav id and Michal’s house in order to am bush Dav id when he
com es out in the m orning. In som e unspecified way , the alert Michal learns of
the plot and warns Dav id in these urgent, com pact words: “If y ou do not get
y ourself away tonight, tom orrow y ou’ll be dead” (1 Sam . 1 9 :1 1 ). This is
im m ediately followed neither by a v erbal response from Dav id nor by any
indication of what he feels, but only by Michal’s brisk action and Dav id’s
em phatic com pliance: “And Michal let Dav id down from the window, and he
went off and fled and got away ” (1 Sam . 1 9 :1 2 ). These three v erbs for the one in
Michal’s breathless instructions underline Dav id’s single-m inded attention to
the crucial business of sav ing him self.

Michal, m eanwhile, is wily enough to cov er Dav id’s escape by im prov ising a
dum m y in bed out of the household idols (terafim) cov ered with a cloth and a
goat’s-hair bolster for a head. This is obv iously an allusion to Rachel, who, in
fleeing with Jacob from her father (Genesis 3 1 ), steals Laban’s terafim and hides
them under the cam el-pillow when he com es to search her tent. Perhaps the
allusion is m eant to foreshadow a fatality shared by Michal with Rachel, who
becom es the object of Jacob’s unwitting curse because of the theft (Gen. 3 1 :3 2 );
what is certain is that the allusion reinforces our sense of Michal as a wom an
who has renounced allegiance to her father in her dev otion to her husband. For
when Saul, finding that Dav id has slipped out of his hands, castigates his
daughter for her treachery , Michal coolly turns around her own words to Dav id
and her actions of the prev ious night and pretends that Dav id threatened her,
say ing, “Let m e go. Why should I kill y ou?” (1 Sam . 1 9 :1 7 ).

It is noteworthy that the only words purportedly spoken by Dav id to Michal

are m erely her inv ention to protect herself. So far, their relationship has been
literally and figurativ ely a one-sided dialogue. First we were told twice that she

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lov ed him , while all that could be safely inferred about his attitude toward her
was that the m arriage was politically useful. Now she v igorously dem onstrates
her lov e, and the practical intelligence behind it, by her words and actions at a
m om ent of crisis, while the text, faithful to its principle of blocking access to the
priv ate Dav id, env elops him in silence, representing him only as a m an in
m ortal danger who goes off, flees, and escapes.

Dav id, after putting Saul’s hom icidal intentions to the test one last tim e with
the help of his friend Jonathan, heads for the badlands, accom panied by a band
of tough fighting m en disaffected from Saul. Michal now disappears from the
scene. Bare m ention of her occurs only at the end of 1 Sam uel 2 5, in connection
with Dav id’s taking another two wiv es. The happily widowed Abigail, another
of those extraordinarily enterprising and practical biblical wom en, has just
been seen taking off after Dav id in a chain of v erbs: “And Abigail hurried and
rose and rode on the donkey , her fiv e y oung wom en walking behind her, and
she went after Dav id’s m essengers, and she becam e his wife” (1 Sam . 2 5:4 2 ).
This is followed by an observ ation about Dav id’s m atrim onial activ ity
(probably to be construed as a pluperfect), which leads the narrator at last to
inform us what has happened to Michal while Dav id has been on the lam : “And
Ahinoam Dav id had taken from Jezreel, and both of them becam e his wiv es.
And Saul had giv en Michal his daughter, Dav id’s wife, to Palti son of Laish, who
was from Gallim ” (1 Sam . 2 5:4 3 ). Michal, last observ ed as a forceful initiator of
action, now stands in contrast to the energetically activ e Abigail as an object
acted upon, passed by her father from one m an to another. The dubious legality
of Saul’s action is perhaps intim ated by the use of the epithet “Dav id’s wife”; the
m otiv e, of course, for m arry ing off his daughter to som eone else is political, in
order to dem onstrate, howev er clum sily , that Dav id has no bond of kinship with
the roy al fam ily and hence no claim to the throne. What Michal feels about this
transaction, or about the absent Dav id and his new wiv es of whom she m ay
hav e heard, we are not told. The text is sim ilarly silent about Palti’s feelings—
indeed, about his v ery identity —though he will later hav e his brief m om ent of
m em orable rev elation.

The strategy of setting up a screen around Dav id’s intim ate responses is
deploy ed with alm ost teasing prov ocation a few chapters later (1 Sam uel 3 0)
when Abigail and Ahinoam , together with the wiv es and children of all Dav id’s

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m en, are taken off as captiv es in an Am alekite raid on his headquarters at
Ziklag. Returning from a sortie, Dav id and his m en find their town burned and
their wiv es and children gone. Dav id’s reaction is reported with the m ost artful
am biguity : “And Dav id, and the troops who were with him , raised their v oices
and wept until there was no m ore strength left in them to weep. And Dav id’s
two wiv es had been taken captiv e, Ahinoam the Jezreelite and Abigail wife of
Nabal the Carm elite. And Dav id was in dire straits, for the troops thought to
stone him , for all the troops were em bittered, ev ery m an ov er his sons and his
daughters” (1 Sam . 3 0:4 –6 ).

First there is the public expression of grief, the long fit of weeping, in which
Dav id naturally participates. Then we are inform ed that his two wiv es are
am ong the captiv es, and in the paratactic flow of the v erses, with no sentence
div isions in the original text, it is easy enough to read this as cause and effect:
“Dav id’s two wiv es had been taken ... and Dav id was in dire straits.” The idiom I
hav e translated as “in dire straits” (vatetzer le) can refer either to a feeling of
distress or to the objectiv e condition of being in straits, in phy sical danger, and
the next clause, “for the people wanted to stone him ,” pirouettes on the
am biguity and turns around to the second m eaning. Where we thought we had
a spontaneous expression of Dav id’s grief ov er the loss of his wiv es, we are again
confronted with Dav id the political leader in a tight corner, struggling to sav e
both him self and the situation—which he prom ptly does by a dev astating
counterattack on the Am alekites in which the captiv es are rescued. It is not that
we are led to infer any clear absence of personal feeling in Dav id, but that again
the priv ate person has been displaced through the strategy of presentation by
the public m an, and the intim ate Dav id rem ains opaque.

Michal returns to the story as the result of a series of decisiv e political

dev elopm ents (2 Sam uel 3 ). Saul has died, and after a bitter civ il war, Abner,
his com m ander-in-chief, is prepared to sue for peace with Dav id, who m akes it a
precondition to negotiations that he be giv en back his wife Michal, “whom I
betrothed with a hundred Philistine foreskins” (2 Sam . 3 :1 4 ). This bloody
rem inder is m eant to stress the legitim acy of Dav id’s right to Michal, for whom
he has paid the full bride-price stipulated by her father, and that em phasis
suggests it is not any personal bond but political calculation—Michal’s utility as
a m eans of reinforcing Dav id’s claim to the allegiance of Saul’s subjects—that

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m akes him insist on her return.

His dem and is prom ptly m et by Saul’s son (2 Sam . 3 :1 5–1 6 ): “And Ish-
Bosheth sent and had her taken from her husband, from Paltiel son of Laish.
And her husband went with her, weeping as he went after her, as far as
Bahurim . And Abner said to him , ‘Go back!’ and he went back.” The rem arkable
suggestiv eness of the Bible’s artistic econom y could scarcely be better
illustrated. This is all we ev er know of Palti the son of Laish. He appears from the
darkness to weep for his wife and to follow her, until he is driv en back forev er
into the darkness by a m an of power with whom he cannot hope to contend. He
is called twice in close sequence Michal’s m an or husband (ʾish), a title to which
at least his feelings giv e him legitim ate claim , and which echoes ironically
against Dav id’s use in the preceding v erse of ʾishti, m y wife or wom an, to
describe a relationship with Michal that is legal and political but perhaps not at
all em otional on his side. The contrast between Dav id, again speaking carefully
weighed public words, and Palti, expressing priv ate grief through publicly
v isible action, is pointed. As for Michal, who has been liv ing for y ears as Palti’s
wife, we hav e no way of knowing whether she feels gratitude, lov e, pity , or
contem pt for her powerless second husband, though we m ay begin to guess that
the feelings she now entertains toward Dav id him self will be less than kindly .

The actual reunion between Dav id and Michal is entirely suppressed, for the
writer wants to leav e us wondering a little longer while he attends to clim actic
political ev ents (the m urder of Abner, the end of the civ il war, the conquest of
Jerusalem ), and thus to reserv e the rev elation of what their m utual attitudes
now are for a final confrontation between them . The writer’s artful sureness of
selectiv ity in the m eans he adopts to present character is ev ident in the striking
fact that, until the final m eeting between Michal and Dav id, at no point is there
any dialogue between them —an av oidance of v erbal exchange particularly
noticeable in the Bible, where such a large part of the burden of narration is
taken up by dialogue. When that exchange finally com es, it is an explosion.

Dav id, hav ing captured from the Jebusites the m ountain stronghold that will
be the capital of the dy nasty he is founding, settles his fam ily and entourage
there and then personally leads the Ark of the LORD in a festiv e procession up to
Jerusalem (2 Sam uel 6 ). Michal enters this picture as an unhappy spectator (2

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Sam . 6 :1 6 ): “And as the Ark of the LORD cam e into the City of Dav id, Michal
the daughter of Saul looked out through the window and saw King Dav id
leaping and whirling before the LORD, and she scorned him in her heart.” With
a fine sense of the tactics of exposition, the narrator tells us exactly what Michal
is feeling but not why . The hiatus in explanation, which will in part be filled by
the ensuing dialogue, again opens the gates to m ultiple interpretation. The
scorn for Dav id welling up in Michal’s heart is thus plausibly attributable in
som e degree to all of the following: the undignified public spectacle that Dav id
just now is m aking of him self; Michal’s jealousy ov er the m om ent of glory Dav id
is enjoy ing while she sits alone, a neglected co-wife, back at the prov isional
palace; Michal’s resentm ent ov er Dav id’s indifference to her all these y ears,
ov er the other wiv es he has taken, and ov er being torn away from the dev oted
Palti; Dav id’s dy nastic am bitions—now clearly rev ealed in his establishing the
Ark in the “City of Dav id”—which will irrev ocably displace the house of Saul.
The distance between the spouses is nicely indicated here by the epithets chosen
for each: she is the “daughter of Saul,” and she sees him as the king. Michal’s
subsequent words to Dav id seize on the im m ediate occasion, the leaping and
whirling, as the particular reason for her anger, but the biblical writer knows
as well as any psy chologically m inded m odern that one’s em otional reaction to
an im m ediate stim ulus can hav e a com plicated prehistory ; and by suppressing
any causal explanation in his initial statem ent of Michal’s scorn, he beautifully
suggests the “ov erdeterm ined” nature of her contem ptuous ire, how it bears the
weight of ev ery thing that has not been said but obliquely intim ated about the
relation between Michal and Dav id.

There follow three v erses that, leav ing Michal in her fury at the window,
describe in detail Dav id’s perform ance of his cerem onial functions as he offers
sundry sacrifices, blesses the people, distributes delicacies. Then Dav id returns
to his house to bless—or perhaps the v erb here m eans sim ply to greet—his own
fam ily :
2 0b. And Michal daughter of Saul cam e out to m eet Dav id, and she said,
“How honored today is the king of Israel, who has exposed him self before
the ey es of his serv ants’ slav egirls as som e scurrilous fellow would expose
him self!” 2 1 . And Dav id said to Michal, “Before the LORD, who chose m e
instead of y our father and instead of all his house to appoint m e prince

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 ov er the LORD’s people, ov er Israel, I will play before the LORD! 2 2 . And I
will be dishonored still m ore than this and be debased in m y own ey es!
But with the slav egirls about whom y ou spoke, with them let m e be
honored.” 2 3 . And Michal daughter of Saul had no child till her dy ing
day .

Michal, who at last m ust hav e her say with Dav id, does not wait until he has
actually entered the house but goes out to m eet him (perhaps, one m ight
speculate, with the added idea of hav ing her words ring in the ears of his retinue
outside). The exchange of whipsaw sarcasm s between the two reflects the high-
tension fusion of the personal and the political in their relationship. When
Michal addresses Dav id in the third person as king of Israel, it is not in deference
to roy alty but in insolent anger at this im possible m an who does not know how
to behav e like a king. She m akes Dav id an exhibitionist in the technical, sexual
sense (“as som e scurrilous fellow would expose him self”: apparently his skirts
were fly ing high as he cav orted before the Ark), stressing that the hungry ey es
of the slav egirls hav e taken it all in—an em phasis that leads one to suspect there
is a good deal of sexual jealousy behind what is ostensibly an objection to his lack
of regal dignity . Dav id responds to the daughter of Saul with a sonorous
inv ocation of the LORD, who has chosen him for the throne instead of Saul and
his heirs. As div inely elected king, Dav id is to be the judge of what is a decorous
celebration before the LORD: he seizes Michal’s sarcastic “honored,” turns it into
a defiant “I will be dishonored” (the opposed Hebrew roots suggest
ety m ologically “heav y ” [kabbed], and “light” [qal]); then, hurling back to
Michal the idea of how he has exposed him self to the ey es of other wom en, insists
that he will be honored by these lowly slav egirls for the behav ior his wife thinks
degrading. In all this, the writer is careful to conceal his own precise
sy m pathies. He does not question the historically crucial fact of Dav id’s div ine
election, so prom inently stressed by the king him self at the beginning of his
speech; but theological rights do not necessarily justify dom estic wrongs, and
the anointed m onarch of Israel m ay still be a harsh and unfeeling husband to
the wom an who has lov ed him and sav ed his life.

There is a strategically placed gap between the end of v erse 2 2 and the

1 56
beginning of v erse 2 3 . Michal, hardly a wom an to swallow insults in silence, is
refused the priv ilege of a reply to Dav id, nor is there any indication of her
inward response to this v erbal assault. The breaking off of the dialogue at this
point is itself an im plicit com m entary . Dav id has the last word because, after
all, he has the power, as he has just taken pains to point out to Michal. The
daughter of a rejected roy al house and by now a consort of only m arginal
political utility to the popularly acclaim ed king, and the least fav ored of four or
m ore co-wiv es, Michal can do nothing, and perhaps has literally nothing m ore
to say , about her rage against her husband. Verse 2 3 , the last one in which
Michal will be accorded any m ention, is a kind of epilogue to the confrontation,
fastened to it with the special kind of am biguity to which biblical parataxis
lends itself. (Modern translators generally destroy the fineness of the effect of
rendering the initial “and” as “so.”) The narrator states the objectiv e fact of
Michal’s barrenness—in the ancient Near East, a wom an’s greatest m isfortune—
but carefully av oids any subordinate conjunction or sy ntactical signal that
would indicate a clear causal connection between the fact stated and the
dialogue that precedes it. A theologically m inded reader, and certainly any
adv ocate of the div ine right of the Dav idic dy nasty , is inv ited to read this
statem ent as a declaration that Michal was punished by God for her
presum ption in rebuking His anointed king ov er an act of roy al and cultic
cerem ony . A reader attending m ore to the personal dram a that has been
enacted between Michal and Dav id m ight justifiably conclude that after this
furious exchange, Dav id sim ply ceased to hav e conjugal relations with Michal
and so condem ned her to barrenness. Her childlessness m ay also turn back
against Dav id, for it denies him the possibility of uniting the house of Saul with
the house of Dav id in his offspring. Finally , the paratactic link between the two
v erses leav es the teasing possibility , howev er less likely than the other
readings, that we m ay presum e too m uch altogether in seeing here any definite
relation of cause and effect: we cannot be entirely certain that Michal’s
childlessness is not a bitter coincidence, the last painful twist of a wronged
wom an’s fate.

I would suggest that causation in hum an affairs is itself brought into a

paradoxical double focus by the narrativ e techniques of the Bible. The biblical
writers obv iously exhibit, on the one hand, a profound belief in a strong, clearly

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dem arcated pattern of causation in history and indiv idual liv es, and m any of
the fram ing dev ices, the m otif-structures, the sy m m etries and recurrences in
their narrativ es reflect this belief. God directs, history com plies; a person sins, a
person suffers; Israel backslides, Israel falls. The v ery perception, on the other
hand, of godlike depths, unsoundable capacities for good and ev il, in hum an
nature, also leads these writers to render their protagonists in way s that
destabilize any m onolithic sy stem of causation, set off a fluid m ov em ent am ong
different orders of causation, som e of them com plem entary or m utually
reinforcing, others ev en m utually contradictory . The m ere possibility that
there m ight be no clear causal connection between Michal’s anger against
Dav id and her barrenness, though m arginal, serv es to unsettle the sense of
straightforward, unilinear consequence to which lazy m ental habits—ancient
and m odern—accustom us. The accidents befalling and the actions perform ed by
the indiv idual as a free agent created in God’s im age are m ore intricately
lay ered, m ore dev iously ram ified, than m any earlier and com peting v iews of
hum anity m ight lead us to im agine, and the narrativ e technique of studied
reticences that generate an interplay of significantly patterned am biguities is a
faithful translation into art of this v iew of the hum an subject.

Ev ery biblical narrator is of course om niscient, but in contrast, for exam ple,
to the narrator of the Hom eric poem s, who m akes his characters beautifully
perspicuous ev en (as in the I liad) when he is dealing with the m ost darkly
irrational im pulses of the hum an heart, the ancient Hebrew narrator display s
his om niscience with a drastic selectiv ity . He m ay on occasion choose to
priv ilege us with the knowledge of what God thinks of a particular character or
action—om niscient narration can go no higher—but as a rule, because of his
understanding of the nature of his hum an subjects, he leads us through v ary ing
darknesses that are lit up by intense but narrow beam s, phantasm al
glim m erings, sudden strobic flashes. We are com pelled to get at character and
m otiv e, as in Im pressionist writers like Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, through a
process of inference from fragm entary data, often with crucial pieces of
narrativ e exposition strategically withheld, and this leads to m ultiple or
som etim es ev en wav ering perspectiv es on the characters. There is, in other
words, an abiding m y stery in character as the biblical writers conceiv e it,
which they em body in their ty pical m ethods of presentation.

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 This underly ing approach to character is perhaps m ost easily seen in the
capacity for change exhibited by the biblical personages who are treated at any
length. Cognate with the biblical understanding of indiv idual character as
som ething that dev elops in and is transform ed by tim e—preem inently in the
stories of Jacob and Dav id—is a sense of character as a center of surprise. This
unpredictable and changing nature of character is one reason why biblical
personages cannot hav e fixed Hom eric epithets (Jacob is not “wily Jacob,” Moses
is not “sagacious Moses”) but only relational epithets determ ined by the
strategic requirem ents of the im m ediate context: Michal, as the circum stances
v ary , is either “daughter of Saul” or “wife of Dav id.” 2

Achilles in the I liad undergoes v iolent fluctuations of m ood and attitude, first
sulking in his tent, then transform ed into a blind force of destruction by the
death in battle of his belov ed com panion Patroklos, then at the end brought back
to his hum an senses by the pleas of the bereav ed Priam ; but there is a stable
substratum of the m an Achilles, and these are, after all, oscillations in feeling
and action, not in character. Dav id, on the other hand, in the m any decades
through which we follow his career, is first a prov incial ingénu and public
charm er, then a shrewd political m anipulator and a tough guerrilla leader,
later a helpless father floundering in the entanglem ents of his sons’ intrigues
and rebellion, a refugee suddenly and astoundingly abasing him self before the
scathing curses of Shim ei, then a doddering old m an bam boozled or at least
directed by Bathsheba and Nathan, and, in still another surprise on his v ery
deathbed, an im placable seeker of v engeance against Joab and against the sam e
Shim ei whom he had ostensibly forgiv en after the defeat of Absalom ’s
insurrection.

As a final illustration of how the Bible’s strategies of narrativ e exposition

reflect a sense of the unknowable and the unforeseeable in hum an nature, I
would like to contrast two scenes of m ourning, one from Hom er, the other from
the Dav id story . Priam ’s confrontation of Achilles in the last book of the I liad to
beg for the body of his son Hektor is surely one of the m ost poignant m om ents in
ancient literature. “I hav e gone through what no other m ortal on earth has
gone through,” Priam concludes his plea to Achilles, “I put m y lips to the hands
of the m an who has killed m y children.” Here are the first few lines, in the

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translation by Richm ond Lattim ore, that describe the effect of Priam ’s bold
entreaty :
So he spoke, and stirred in the other a passion of griev ing for his own
father. He took the old m an’s hand and pushed him gently away , and the
two rem em bered, as Priam sat huddled at the feet of Achilleus and wept
close for m anslaughtering Hektor and Achilleus wept now for his own
father, now again for Patroklos. The sound of their m ourning m ov ed in
the house. (Book 2 4 :507 –51 2 )

The em otions of these two sadly rem em bering figures are as clearly exposed
for us as their phy sical positions—old Priam huddled at the feet of the m ighty
y oung Achilles. In a m om ent Achilles will speak soft words of com passion to
Priam . The transition from m urderous rage to kindness is deeply m ov ing y et
not, in the biblical m anner, surprising. Achilles’s anger has estranged him from
his own hum anity , but, in the v iew of the Greek poet, there are univ ersal
em otions, univ ersal facts of existence, shared by all m en, and Priam ’s plea has
rem inded Achilles that, though they are separated by enm ity and age, they
share identically in this hum an heritage of relation and feeling. All m en hav e
fathers, all m en lov e, all m ust griev e when they lose those they lov e. Part of the
power of the scene com es from the fact that the connection between these two
figures, weeping together as each separately recalls his own lost ones, is so
lucidly rev ealed through the narrator’s sim ultaneous ov erv iew of the external
scene and the inner experience of both characters.

In 2 Sam uel 1 2 , when Dav id’s first son by Bathsheba is stricken with an
incurable illness, the king entreats God for the sake of the infant, fasting and
sleeping on the ground. He refuses all sustenance for sev en day s, and when on
the sev enth day the child dies, his serv ants are afraid to tell him , assum ing
that, if his behav ior was so extrem e while the child was still aliv e, he will go to
ev en m ore extrav agant lengths when he learns of the child’s death.

1 9 . And Dav id saw that his serv ants were whispering to each other and
Dav id understood that the child was dead. And Dav id said to his serv ants,
“Is the child dead?” And they said, “He is dead.” 2 0. And Dav id rose from

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 the ground and bathed and rubbed him self with oil and changed his
garm ents and cam e into the house of the LORD, and worshipped and
asked that food be set out for him , and he ate. 2 1 . And his serv ants said to
him , “What is this thing that y ou hav e done? For the sake of the liv ing
child y ou fasted and wept, and when the child was dead, y ou arose and
ate food!” 2 2 . And he said, “When the child was still aliv e I fasted and
wept, for I thought, ‘Who knows, the LORD will fav or m e and the child
will liv e.’ 2 3 . And now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him
back again? I am going to him but he will not com e back to m e.” 2 4 . And
Dav id consoled Bathsheba his wife, and he cam e to her and lay with her,
and she bore a son and called his nam e Solom on, and the LORD lov ed him .

The paradox of Dav id’s behav ior in his grief is m irrored in the strategies of
narrativ e exposition adopted to present it. The whispered words of the serv ants
(which were directly reported in v erse 1 8) prepare us for a terrific outburst
from the king. Instead, as soon as he hears the m onosy llabic confirm ation of his
worst suspicions, “He is dead” (in the Hebrew, a single sy llable, met, “dead”), he
rises, and we see him in a rapid sequence of acts, conv ey ed in a chain of nine
uninterrupted v erbs, which are left entirely enigm atic until his sim ple, starkly
eloquent words of explanation to the baffled serv ants. All m en m ay indeed
griev e ov er the loss of their lov ed ones, but this univ ersal fact does not produce a
univ ersal response because the expression of feeling, the v ery experience of the
feeling, takes place through the whorled and deeply grained m edium of each
person’s stubborn indiv iduality . As readers, we are quite as surprised as the
serv ants by Dav id’s actions, then his words, for there is v ery little in the
narrativ e before this point that could hav e prepared us for this sudden, y et
utterly conv incing, rev elation of the sorrowing Dav id, so bleakly aware of his
own inev itable m ortality as he m ourns his dead son.

The exchange between Dav id and the serv ants is cut off after his answer,
without any dram atic closure. Their reaction is no longer of any interest, and,
in ty pical biblical fashion, as we leap forward to the conjugal consoling of
Bathsheba and the birth of the div inely fav ored son that balances out the death
of the first child, we are giv en no hints from the narrator for the im aginativ e
reconstruction of Dav id’s recov ery from this bereav em ent. The sy m m etrically

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m arked pattern of div ine punishm ent for the founder of the Israelite dy nasty
followed by div ine com pensation fram es the whole episode; but Dav id, as his
speech to the serv ants v iv idly illustrates, is a sentient person, not just a pawn in
God’s grand historical design, and about m any facets of this person—in contrast
to the Hom eric heroes—we are left to wonder. But this sober m om ent of strange
m ourning will continue to echo in our m em ory , for we shall soon enough be
prov ided in the stories of Am non and Tam ar, and of Absalom , with still m ore
troubling instances of the aging Dav id’s anguish as a father.

The Greek tendency to narrativ e specification, as I suggested earlier, seem s to

be one that m odern literary practice has by and large adopted and dev eloped.
Precisely for that reason, we hav e to readjust our habits as readers in order to
bring an adequate attentiv eness to the rather different narrativ e m aneuv ers
that are characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. But the underly ing biblical
conception of character as often unpredictable, in som e way s im penetrable,
constantly em erging from and slipping back into a penum bra of am biguity , in
fact has greater affinity with dom inant m odern notions than do the habits of
conceiv ing character ty pical of the Greek epics. The m onotheistic rev olution in
consciousness profoundly altered the way s in which m an as well as God was
im agined, and the effects of that rev olution probably still determ ine certain
aspects of our conceptual world m ore than we suspect. This altered
consciousness was of course expressed ideologically in the legislativ e and
prophetic im pulses of the Bible, but in biblical narrativ e it was also realized
through the bold and subtle articulation of an innov ativ e literary form . The
narrativ e art of the Bible, then, is m ore than an aesthetic enterprise, and
learning to read its fine calibrations m ay bring us closer than the broad-gauge
concepts of intellectual history and com parativ e religion to a structure of
im agination in whose shadow we still stand.

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 7

Composite Artistry

ANY ATTEMPT TO recov er the literary art of the Bible is bound to encounter a
v ariety of obstacles interv ening between the wouldbe knower and the object of
knowledge. We m ay , of course, hav e certain lim ited adv antages as m odern
readers approaching this body of texts that hitherto has been treated m ainly in
theological, philological, and historical term s. That is, what we bring to the
Bible as readers, say , of Boccaccio, Flaubert, Tolstoy , Conrad, and Kafka, m ay on
occasion throw unexpected light on the ancient text because, giv en the finite
repertory of fictional m odes av ailable at any tim e, there m ay be certain partial
but substantial affinities between ancient and m odern narrativ e practice. Yet it
m ust also be recognized that there is but a step from such serendipity to the
pitfall of gratuitously m odernizing the ancient through the subtle pressure of
interpretiv e ingenuity . More com m only , I should think, one discov ers that the
characteristic procedures of biblical narrativ e differ noticeably from those of
later Western fiction but that the biblical conv entions can be grasped by som e
process of cautious analogy with conv entions m ore fam iliar to us, as is the case
with the use of ty pe-scenes and v erbatim repetition in the biblical stories. There
are, howev er, still other aspects of the Bible that would appear to baffle our
efforts to m ake sense of it as literary form .

The chief of these problem atic aspects is the often am biguous status of those
com ponents of the biblical corpus com m only called “books,” or, indeed, of m any
discrete narrativ e segm ents within the indiv idual books. The usual object of
literary inv estigation is a book, or, as m any prefer to say now under the
influence of recent French intellectual fashions, a text. But the biblical text
often prov es under scrutiny to be at once m ultiple and fragm entary . Quite
frequently , we cannot be sure what the boundaries of a giv en text are, how it is
continued in surrounding texts, why it m ay be ignored, echoed, cited, or ev en
actually duplicated elsewhere in the biblical corpus. A still grav er challenge to
the integrity of m any biblical texts that we m ight want to look at as literary
wholes is the elaborately lay ered nature of the m aterial articulated in ancient
tradition. A century of analy tic scholarship has m ade powerful argum ents to

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the effect that where we m ight naiv ely im agine that we are reading a text,
what we actually hav e is a constant stitching together of earlier texts drawn
from div ergent literary and som etim es oral traditions, with m inor or m ajor
interv entions by later editors in the form of glosses, connecting passages,
conflations of sources, and so forth. The m ost em inent instance of this com posite
character of the biblical text has been found by scholars in the first four books of
the Pentateuch, which, on the ev idence of sty le, consistency of narrativ e data,
theological outlook, and historical assum ptions, hav e been exhaustiv ely
analy zed as a splicing of three separate prim ary strands—the Yahwistic
Docu m en t (J), the Elohistic Docum ent (E), and the Priestly Docum ent (P). J
m ight date back to the ninth century BCE; E could be contem poraneous or
about a century later; P would appear to be the work of a tradition of priestly
writers, not one author, that begins relativ ely late in the First Tem ple period
and continues into the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. (Scholarly ingenuity being
what it is, v arious subdocum ents as well as interm ediate stages between the
original literary traditions and the final editing hav e been proposed, but the
intricacies of the argum ent need not concern us here, only the basic proposition,
which seem s conv incing enough, that the text as we hav e it was not the work of
a single hand, or of a single m om ent in tim e.) Bey ond the Pentateuch, the
textual com ponents of the narrativ e books of the Bible hav e not been blessed
with the classroom clarity of these alphabetical m arkers, but under analy sis a
good m any passages in the Form er Prophets rev eal com posite elem ents
analogous to, and perhaps som etim es ev en continuous with, what has been
discov ered in the Pentateuch.

All this would seem to be an em barrassm ent for the kind of literary analy sis I
hav e been adv ocating, for in discussing works of literature, one still likes to
assum e that there is som ething “esem plastic,” as Coleridge put it, in the
activ ity of the literary im agination, som e deep intuition of art that finely
interweav es, shaping a com plex and m eaningful whole that is m ore than the
sum of its parts. What, then, are we to do with our literary notions of intricate
design in reading these texts that the experts hav e inv ited us to v iew, at least in
the m ore extrem e instances, as a crazy -quilt of ancient traditions?

At the outset of this inquiry , I suggested that the editorial com bination of
different literary sources m ight usefully be conceiv ed as the final stage in the

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process of artistic creation that produced biblical narrativ e. The illustration I
used, howev er—the seem ingly interpolated story of Judah and Tam ar in
Genesis 3 8—does not touch the root of the problem , for ev en in the unitary texts
of m uch later writers such as Cerv antes, Fielding, Diderot, and Dickens, one
m ay find deliberate interpolations that hav e im portant them atic and
structural functions, while the com posite texts of the Bible som etim es confront
us with discontinuities, duplications, and contradictions that cannot be so
readily accom m odated to our own assum ptions about literary unity . What I
should like to propose here is that the biblical writers and redactors—since the
line between the two is not alway s clear, I will occasionally , as a perhaps
instructiv e prov ocation, use the m ore fam iliar and literary of the two term s—
had certain notions of unity rather different from our own, and that the fullness
of statem ent they aspired to achiev e as writers in fact led them at tim es to
v iolate what a later age and culture would be disposed to think of as canons of
unity and logical coherence. The biblical text m ay not be the whole cloth
im agined by prem odern Judeo-Christian tradition, but the confused textual
patchwork that scholarship has often found to displace such earlier v iews m ay
in m any instances prov e upon further scrutiny to be purposeful pattern.

Adm ittedly , the effort to reconstruct a conception of structural unity

div ergent from our own and separated from us by three m illennia can hav e no
easy guarantee of success. There are passages of biblical narrativ e that seem to
resist any harm onizing interpretation, leading one to conclude either that there
were certain circum stances in the transm ission and editing of ancient Hebrew
texts that could on occasion lead to intrinsic incoherence, or that the biblical
notion of what constituted a m eaningful and unified narrativ e continuum
m ight at tim es be unfathom able from the enorm ous distance of intellectual and
historical ev olution that stands between us and these creations of the early Iron
Age. My own experience as a reader m akes m e suspect that such insoluble
cruxes deriv ing from the com posite nature of the text are som ewhat rarer than
scholars tend to assum e, but in order to m ake the problem with which we are
dealing perfectly clear, I should like to begin by describing just such a crux.
From there I shall proceed to a borderline case, where there is a duplication of
sources and a logical contradiction that m ay hav e som e inferable justification
in the writer’s need to encom pass his subject with satisfy ing fullness. Finally , I

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shall propose two extended illustrations of what I think can be conv incingly
construed as the use of com posite m aterials to achiev e a com prehensiv eness of
v ision that is distinctiv ely biblical.

Num bers 1 6 giv es us a detailed account of the aborted rebellion in the

wilderness by Korah and his followers against the authority of Moses. The story
is forceful enough to hav e m ade Korah a kind of archety pe of the willful rebel
against legitim ate rule, but careful scrutiny suggests that the reports of two
different rebellions hav e been superim posed upon one another, leav ing ev ident
contradictions as to the identity of the rebels, the purpose of the rebellion, the
place of confrontation with Moses, and the m anner in which the rebels are
destroy ed. 1

The story begins with a som ewhat confusing introduction (Num . 1 6 :1 –2 ) of

the conspirators that in its v ery sy ntactical flaccidity would appear to reflect
the writer’s difficulties in com bining disparate m aterials: “And Korah son of
Izhar son of Kohath son of Lev i, and Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab and On son
of Peleth sons Reuben, took up, and they rose before Moses, and two hundred and
fifty m en of the Israelites, com m unity chieftains, persons called up to the
m eeting, m en of renown.” Korah is a Lev ite, and, logically enough, his m otiv e
for rebellion is the desire to assum e priestly prerogativ es, as the next block of
v erses (Num . 1 6 :3 –1 1 ) m akes quite clear. His rebellion is said to be directed not
just against Moses but against Moses and Aaron, the High Priest (v erse 3 ). Moses
addresses “Korah and ... all his com m unity ” specifically turning to them as
“sons of Lev i” (v erse 8), with no allusion whatev er to the Reubenites, Dathan
and Abiram , who would in any case hav e had no special interest in priestly
priv ileges. The legitim acy of Korah’s claim to officiate in the cult is to be tested
by a cultic trial: he and his two hundred and fifty followers are challenged to
offer incense to the LORD in firepans before the Tent of Assem bly , and to suffer
the consequences if God should reject their assum ption of sacerdotal rights.

Dathan and Abiram , introduced as a dangling sy ntactical m em ber without a

predicate in the initial v erse of the chapter, do not enter the story at all until
v erse 1 2 . Verses 1 2 through 1 5 then set aside Korah and his followers to
concentrate exclusiv ely on Dathan and Abiram . Here it becom es ev ident that
the Reubenite rebellion, unlike that of the Lev ites, is directed against Moses

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alone, not against Moses and Aaron, and what is at issue is political authority —
appropriately enough, if one recalls that Reuben is the firstborn of Jacob. Verses
1 6 through 2 2 abandon Dathan and Abiram once m ore to report the
preparatory stage of the trial of the firepans inv olv ing only the Korahites.
Verses 2 3 through 3 4 narrate the destruction of Dathan and Abiram and their
fam ilies, which takes place not at the Tent of Assem bly but by the tents of the
Reubenites, Dathan and Abiram hav ing defiantly refused Moses’s sum m ons to
“com e up” from their dwellings to parley with him . An editorial attem pt to keep
the two stories together is reflected in the strangely fused locution (v erses 2 3
and 2 7 ), “the dwelling of Korah, Dathan and Abiram ” (Korah, as a m em ber of a
different tribe, would hardly hav e shared tents with the two Reubenites).
Dathan and Abiram perish by being swallowed up by the earth. The addition of
Korah and his people to this catastrophe just before the end of v erse 3 2 looks like
an editorial afterthought that is inconsistent with the preceding account of
Dathan and Abiram , sans Lev ites, standing at the entrance of their tents as the
conv ulsion of the earth begins. Finally , the annihilation of the rebel Lev ites,
firepans in hand, actually occurs at another location, the area in front of the
Tent of Assem bly , and the m ethod of destruction is not engulfm ent but
incineration, a fire shooting out from the LORD (v erse 3 5, the last v erse of the
chapter).

The internal contradictions of Num bers 1 6 are grav e enough to hav e caught
the attention of prem odern com m entators. Thus the twelfth-century Abraham
Ibn Ezra, one of the m ost acute and one of the m ost rationalistic of traditional
Hebrew exegetes, succinctly defines the v ery problem we hav e been considering
in his com m ent on the end of the chapter:
Som e say that Korah was am ong those swallowed up, and the proof is “The
earth swallowed them up ... and Korah” [Num . 2 6 :1 0]. Others say he was
incinerated, and their ev idence is “And Korah, when the com m unity
died, when the fire consum ed” [the v ery next clauses of the sam e v erse,
Num . 2 6 :1 0]. And our sages of blessed m em ory say that he was both
incinerated and swallowed up. But in m y opinion, only in the place of
Dathan and Abiram did the earth split open, for Korah is not m entioned
there; in fact, Korah was standing with the chieftains who were offering
the incense.

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 The biblical account actually seem s dev ised to confuse the two stories and the
two m odes of destruction, an intention rev ealed not only in som e of the form al
features of the story we hav e just rev iewed but also in the retrospectiv e
com m ent of Num bers 2 6 :1 0, where the sy ntactically am biguous phrase “and
Korah” hov ers uneasily between seism ic conv ulsion and div ine fire. Ibn Ezra,
who was a rem arkably gifted Hebrew poet as well as an exegete, tries to rescue
the narrativ e coherence of the story by proposing that in its denouem ent it
bifurcates into two locations, with different v ictim s and different m odes of
destruction in each. But the redactor’s own editorial m aneuv ers indicate that
he would prefer us to see the two rebellious parties and the two catastrophes as
one, or at least as som ehow blurred together.

Why he should hav e wanted to do this is bound to rem ain a m atter of

conjecture because it runs so drastically counter to later notions of how a story
should be put together. I don’t think the confusion can be facilely attributed to
m ere editorial sloppiness, for there is ev idence of som e careful aesthetic and
them atic structuring in the story . The initial speech of the Korahite rebellion
begins with the phrase, “You hav e too m uch”; Moses, toward the end of his
rejoinder, inv okes an identically worded antithesis, “You hav e too m uch.” This
form al sy m m etry is extended as the Reubenite speech of rebellion begins with
the phrase, “Is it too little?” In the story of Dathan and Abiram , where the rebels
want to rise to political dom ination, the recurrent them atic key word is “to go
up,” com pleted ironically in the dénouem ent when they “go down” into the
chasm of the underworld. Correspondingly , in the Korahite rebellion, where the
aspiration is to priesthood, the Leitwörter are “to take” and “to com e [or bring]
close,” term s of horizontal m ov em ent toward the center of the cult instead of
v ertical m ov em ent toward or away from dom inion. 2

All this leads one to suspect that the Hebrew writer m ight conceiv ably hav e
known what he was doing but that we do not. Certainly our notions about the
spatial integrity of the location of a narrated action, the identity of personages,
the consistency of agency and m otiv e in the dev elopm ent of plot, are all
flagrantly v iolated. Giv en the subject of the story , perhaps there were
com pelling political reasons for fusing the two rebellions. Perhaps all these

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considerations of narrativ e coherence seem ed less im portant in the editorial
process than the need to assert them atically that the two separate ev ents—the
attem pt to seize political power and the usurpation of sacerdotal function—
com prised one archety pal rebellion against div ine authority and so m ust be told
as one tale. The rebels are destroy ed when the earth opens up its m outh, as it did
to take in the blood of the m urdered Abel, and by div ine fire, like the rain of fire
that descended on Sodom and Gom orrah. The story m ay deliberately echo,
then, both the first act of sibling v iolence that prefigures all later struggles for
power, and the prov erbial tale of a society destroy ed because it was utterly
perv aded by corruption. For us, the two agencies of destruction are m utually
contradictory ; for the ancient Hebrew, they conceiv ably m ay hav e been
m utually reinforcing, as the two paradigm atic im ages of div ine retribution,
suggesting an ultim ate identity of the political and religious realm s under God’s
dom inion. In any case, the perplexities raised by the intertwined stories of
Korah and Dathan and Abiram illustrate that there are aspects of the com posite
nature of biblical narrativ e texts that we cannot confidently encom pass in our
own explanatory sy stem s.

Let us now consider a m ore com pact exam ple of com posite narrativ e, where
there is duplication together with seem ing contradiction, but not the sort of
bewildering entanglem ent of narrativ e strands we hav e seen in Num bers 1 6 . At
the end of the first v isit of Joseph’s brothers to Egy pt (Genesis 4 2 ), Joseph—still
of course perceiv ed by them only as the alien Egy ptian v iceroy —giv es secret
instructions for the silv er they hav e paid for their grain to be slipped back into
their sacks (Gen. 4 2 :2 5). They hav e already been badly shaken, we should
recall, by their tem porary im prisonm ent on the charge of being spies, and by
Joseph’s holding Sim eon as hostage and insisting that they bring Benjam in back
with them to Egy pt. These last two acts of the v iceroy hav e led the brothers, by
an obv ious path of guilty associations, to recall their cruelty to the y oung
Joseph and to wonder whether retribution for that crim e has finally ov ertaken
them . Now, at the first encam pm ent on the way north to Canaan (Gen. 4 2 :2 7 –
2 8), one of them opens his sack to feed his donkey , “and he saw his silv er, and,
look, it was in the m outh of his bag.” (Lest there be any doubt, we learn from the
brothers’ later report of this ev ent to Joseph [Gen. 4 3 :2 1 ] that all nine of them
m ade this sam e discov ery .) “And he said to his brothers, ‘My silv er has been put

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back, and, look, it’s actually in m y bag.’ And they were dum bfounded and
trem bled each before his brother, say ing, ‘What is this that God has done to
us?’”

As soon as this question is raised about the strange workings of destiny —for
the force of the word for God in the original is not far from “fate”—the narrator
hurries the brothers hom e to Canaan, where they relate to their father Jacob
the troubles they hav e had with the Egy ptian v iceroy , concluding with an
explanation of Sim eon’s absence and the Egy ptian’s dem and that Benjam in be
brought to him . Just at this point, the silv er hidden in the sacks m akes an odd
reappearance (Gen. 4 2 :3 5–3 6 ): “And just as they were em pty ing their packs,
look, each one’s bundle of silv er was in his pack, and they saw their bundles,
both they and their father, and were afraid. And Jacob their father said to
them , “Me y ou hav e bereav ed. Joseph is no m ore and Sim eon is no m ore, and
Benjam in y ou would take? It is I who bear it all.”

According to our own understanding of narrativ e logic, it is obv iously

im possible that the brothers could discov er the hidden m oney twice—once at the
encam pm ent and once in Canaan in their father’s presence—and be surprised
and frightened both tim es. (The biblical norm s of narrativ e reliability will not
really allow us to harm onize the second occurrence with the first by construing
“and they were frightened” in v erse 3 5 as a false show of fear staged to m ake an
im pression on Jacob.) Biblical scholarship essentially explains this duplication
as a clum sy piece of editing. There were, so the accepted hy pothesis runs, two
parallel accounts of the Joseph story , E and J, which differed in som e essential
details. E, which conv eniently enough for the purposes of identification
consistently em ploy s the term saq for “sack,” is the m ain source used in this
passage, and in that v ersion the silv er is discov ered only when the brothers
reach hom e, the prov ender for the pack anim als presum ably hav ing been
carried in separate packs, so that the sacks with the silv er would hav e been left
unopened on the way . In J the term for pack is ʾamtahat (rendered here as
“pack”), and the ʾamtaḥat, unlike the saq, contains both prov ender and silv er.
Scholars tend to assum e that whoev er was responsible for the final form ulation
of our text, whether out of m isguided loy alty to his second source or out of
sim ple poor judgm ent, included an excerpt from J (v erses 2 7 –2 8, quoted abov e)
in which, contradictorily , the silv er is discov ered at the encam pm ent.

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 Precisely in this regard, I would like to raise a question of general principle,
for it m ay help us see the point of m ore elaborate instances of m anifest
duplication in biblical narrativ e. The contradiction between v erses 2 7 –2 8 and
v erse 3 5 is so ev ident that it seem s naiv e on the part of any m odern reader to
conclude that the ancient Hebrew writer was so inept or unperceptiv e that the
conflict between the two v ersions could hav e som ehow escaped him . Let m e
suggest that, quite to the contrary , whoev er was responsible for the com posite
text was perfectly aware of the contradiction but v iewed it as a superficial one.
In linear logic, the sam e action could not hav e occurred twice in two different
way s; but in the narrativ e logic with which this writer worked, it m ade sense to
incorporate both v ersions av ailable to him because together they brought forth
m utually com plem entary im plications of the narrated ev ent, thus enabling
him to giv e a com plete im aginativ e account of it.

In the J v ersion, where the brothers m ake the discov ery when they are all
alone on the carav an track between Egy pt and Canaan, their sheer wonder ov er
what has happened is stressed. It is true that they “trem ble” at the sight of the
m oney , but the em phasis is on their sense of the strange way s of destiny : “What
is this that God has done to us?” The J v ersion in this way is crucial for the
writer because it ties in the discov ery of the silv er with the them e of Joseph’s
knowledge opposed to the brothers’ ignorance that is central to both m eetings in
Egy pt and, indeed, to the entire story . When the brothers ask what is it ʾElohim
—God, fate, and ev en occasionally judge in biblical Hebrew—has done to them ,
we as readers perceiv e a dram atic irony continuous with the dram atic ironies of
the prev ious scene in the v iceregal palace: Joseph in fact is serv ing as the agent
of destiny , as God’s instrum ent, in the large plan of the story ; and the v ery
brothers who earlier were shocked at Joseph’s dream of hav ing the sun and
m oon and elev en stars bow down to him now unwittingly say “God” when we as
readers know that they are referring to that which Joseph has wrought.

The E v ersion of the sam e ev ent, where the discov ery occurs in the presence of
Jacob, is m uch briefer, reporting the brothers’ response to the presence of the
silv er in their sacks with the single v erb of fear, and with no dialogue to
represent their am azed reflection on the way s of prov idence. This v ersion, let
m e suggest, indicates sim ple fear without wonder because it m eans to conv ey a

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direct connection between finding the silv er and the brothers’ feelings of guilt
ov er what they hav e done to Joseph. There is a whole network of m otifs in this
latter part of the Joseph story built on cunning repetitions and rev ersals of
m otifs that appear in the early part of the story . The brothers sold Joseph
southward into slav ery for twenty pieces of silv er (kesef); now they find at the
end of their own northward journey from the place to which they sent him that
the silv er (kesef) they paid out has m y steriously reappeared in their saddle-
packs, and this touches a raw nerv e of guilt in them that had been laid bare
earlier by Joseph’s im prisonm ent of Sim eon and his dem and for Benjam in. One
should note that the discov ery of the silv er occurs in their recapitulation for
Jacob of Joseph’s speech to them (v erses 3 3 –3 4 ) at the exact point where,
following the actual speech (v erses 2 0–2 1 ), they “discov ered” their guilt
toward Joseph. In characteristic biblical fashion, the guilt is not spelled out by
the narrator, only intim ated in the v erb of fearing, then picked up in dialogue
as Jacob responds—and it is im portant to understand that it is a response—to the
brothers. With them , he has seen the silv er. He also m ust hav e seen their fear.
Then, as though giv ing v oice to their unspoken guilt at the discov ery of the
silv er, he turns to them with an accusation: “Me y ou hav e bereav ed. ...” Like
his speech in Genesis 3 7 after Joseph’s bloodied tunic was brought to him , he
expresses him self with the dram atic heightening of scannable v erse, placing
him self and his suffering (“Me y ou hav e bereav ed.... It is I who bear it all”) at
the beginning and the end of the poem . Interestingly , when Joseph disappeared,
Jacob m ade no direct accusation against his sons; but here, as though the
m om entum of his rhetoric were carry ing him to the brink of the literal truth,
he charges them with hav ing bereav ed him of both Joseph and Sim eon.

The Joseph story has both a m oral-psy chological axis and a theological-
historical one. In regard to the latter category , what is im portant is the
m y sterious workings of God, Joseph’s role as an agent of div ine destiny , and the
param ount them e of knowledge v ersus ignorance. In regard to the form er
category , what is crucial is the painful process by which the brothers com e to
accept responsibility for what they hav e done and are led to work out their
guilt. (Jacob’s lam ent here as a chronically bereav ed father is followed
im m ediately by an extrav agant offer on the part of Reuben to assum e total
responsibility , ev en at the cost of his own sons’ liv es, for Benjam in’s safety , and

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then, a little later, by a m ore m easured statem ent on the part of Judah, who
initiated the selling of Joseph and who will be the eloquent, conscience-stricken
spokesm an for the brothers in their ultim ate arraignm ent by Joseph.) I cannot
pretend to certainty in what I hav e inferred about the biblical writer’s sense of
appropriate form , but it seem s to m e at least plausible that he was prepared to
include the m inor inconv enience of duplication and seem ing contradiction in
his narrativ e because that inclusion enabled him to keep both m ajor axes of his
story clearly in v iew at a decisiv e juncture in his plot. A writer in another
tradition m ight hav e tried som ehow to com bine the different aspects of the story
in a single narrativ e ev ent; the biblical author, dealing as he often did in the
editing and splicing and artful m ontage of antecedent literary m aterials, would
appear to hav e arriv ed at this effect of m ultifaceted truth by setting in sequence
two different v ersions that brought into focus two different dim ensions of his
subject. His prim ary task, to be sure, was probably to work out a sequence in
which he could incorporate the two sources that he felt he could not edit out, but
the ensuing fullness of them atic statem ent is not purely accidental.

The analogy of film m ontage in fact suggests som ething of the dy nam ic
interplay between two different presentations of a subject in narrativ e sequence
that we find in the Bible. Sergei Eisenstein’s classic description of the m ontage
effect is worth recalling in just this regard: “The juxtaposition of two separate
shots by splicing them together resem bles not so m uch a sim ple sum of one shot
plus one shot—as it does a creation. It resem bles a creation—rather than a sum of
its parts—from the circum stance that in ev ery such juxtaposition the result is
qualitatively distinguishable from each com ponent elem ent v iewed separately ....
Each particular m ontage piece exists no longer as som ething unrelated, but as a
g i v e n particular representation of the general them e” (the em phases are
Eisenstein’s). 3

Just such a technique of placing two parallel accounts in dy nam ically

com plem entary sequence is splendidly ev ident at the v ery beginning of the
Hebrew Bible. There are, of course, two different creation stories. The first,
generally attributed to P, begins with Genesis 1 :1 and concludes with the report
of the prim ev al sabbath (Gen. 2 :1 –3 ), probably followed, as m ost scholars now
think, by a form al sum m ary in the first half of Genesis 2 :4 : “This is the tale of

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the heav ens and the earth when they were created.” The second v ersion of the
creation story , taken from the J Docum ent, would then begin with the
subordinate clause in the second half of Genesis 2 :4 , “When the LORD God m ade
earth and heav en ... ,” going on to the creation of m an, the v egetable world, the
anim al kingdom , and wom an, in that order, and after the com pletion of
creation proper at the end of Chapter 2 , m ov ing directly into the story of the
serpent and the banishm ent from Eden.

Now, it is obv ious enough that the two accounts are com plem entary as well as
contradictory and ov erlapping, each giv ing a different kind of inform ation
about how the world cam e into being. The P writer (for conv enience, I shall
refer to him in the singular ev en if this source m ay hav e been the product of a
“school”) is concerned with the cosm ic plan of creation and so begins
appropriately with the prim ordial aby ss whose surface is rippled by a wind from
(or breath of) God. The J writer is interested in m an as a cultiv ator of his
env ironm ent and as a m oral agent, and so he begins with a com m ent on the
original lack of v egetation and irrigation and ends with an elaborate report of
the creation of wom an. There are also, howev er, obv ious contradictions between
the two v ersions. According to P, the sequence of creation is v egetation, anim al
life, and finally hum anity . Although the chronology of acts of creation is not so
schem atically clear in J, the sequence there, as we hav e already noted, would
appear to be m an, v egetation, anim al life, wom an. In any case, the m ost
glaring contradiction between the two v ersions is the separation of the creation
of wom an from the creation of m an in J’s account. P states sim ply , “Male and
fem ale He created them ,” suggesting that the two sexes cam e into the world
sim ultaneously and equally . J, on the other hand, im agines wom an as a kind of
div ine afterthought, m ade to fill a need of m an, and m ade, besides, out of one of
m an’s spare parts.

Why should the figure I will call for the m om ent the author of Genesis hav e
felt obliged to use both these accounts, and why did he not at least m odify his
sources enough to harm onize the contradictions? The scholars—who of course
refer to him as redactor, not author—generally explain that he v iewed his
inherited literary m aterials as canonical, which m eant both that he had to
incorporate them and that he could not alter them . What of early Hebrew
writings m ay hav e seem ed canonical in, say , the fifth century BCE, or what

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that m ay hav e m eant at the tim e is a m atter of pure conjecture; but the text we
hav e of the creation story has a coherence as significant form that we can
exam ine, and I would argue that there were com pelling literary reasons for the
Genesis author to take adv antage of both docum ents at his disposal—perhaps
also rejecting others about which we do not know—and to take adv antage as well
of the contradictions between his sources. These reasons should becom e apparent
through som e close attention to the sty listic and them atic differences between
the two creation stories.

Althou gh P begins, according to the general conv ention of opening form ulas
for ancient Near Eastern creation epics, with an introductory adv erbial clause,
“When God began to create heav en and earth,” his prose is grandly paratactic,
m ov ing forward in a stately parade of parallel clauses linked by “and” (the
pa r t icle vav). Or, to switch the m etaphor of m otion, the language and the
represented details of P’s account are all beautifully choreographed. Ev ery thing
is num erically ordered; creation proceeds through a rhy thm ic process of
increm ental repetition; each day begins with God’s world-m aking utterance
(“And God said ...”) and ends with the form al refrain, “It was ev ening and it was
m orning,” preceded in fiv e instances by still another refrain, “And God saw that
it was good.” P’s narrativ e em phasizes both orderly sequence and a kind of
v ertical perspectiv e, from God abov e all things down to the world He is creating.
God is the constant subject of v erbs of generation and the source of lengthy
creativ e com m ands reported as direct speech. (By contrast, in J’s v ersion, there
is a whole block of v erses [Gen. 2 :1 0–1 4 ] where God is entirely absent as
subject; m an, m oreov er, perform s independent action and utters speech; and
the only direct discourse in the whole chapter assigned to God is His com m and to
the first hum ans not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and His brief statem ent
about m an’s need for a helpm ate.)

The orderliness of P’s v ision is expressed in another kind of sy m m etry that is

both sty listic and conceptual: creation, as he represents it, adv ances through a
series of balanced pairings, which in m ost instances are binary oppositions. J
also begins by m entioning the creation of earth and heav en (significantly ,
earth com es first for him ), but he m akes nothing of the opposition in the
dev elopm ent of his story , while P actually builds his picture of creation by
showing how God splits off the realm of earth from the realm of heav en, sets

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lum inaries in the heav ens to shine on the earth, creates the birds of the heav ens
abov e together with the swarm ing things of land and sea below. Darkness and
light, night and day , ev ening and m orning, water and sky , water and dry land,
sun and m oon, grass and trees, bird and sea-creature, beast of the field and
creeping things of the earth, hum an m ale and fem ale—each m om ent of creation
is conceiv ed as a balancing of opposites or a bifurcation producing difference in
som e particular category of existence. In the first half of Chapter 1 (v erses 1 –
1 9 ), for the first four day s of creation, before the appearance of anim ate
creatures, the gov erning v erb, after the reiterated v erbs of God’s speaking, is “to
div ide,” suggesting that the writer was quite aware of defining creation as a
series of bifurcations or splittings-off. God div ides prim ordial light from
prim ordial darkness, the upper waters from the lower, day from night,
terrestrial light from terrestrial darkness. In the second half of the story , as we
pass on to the creation of the anim al realm , the v erbs of div ision disappear, and
with the fuller details pertaining to anim als and m an, the sy m m etry is a little
looser, less form ulaic. Nev ertheless, bracketed pairs continue to inform the
account of cosm ogony , and there is also a noticeable tendency to recapitulate
m any of the prev ious term s of creation as the narrativ e proceeds. The
conclusion in the first sabbath v iv idly illustrates the em phatic sty listic balance,
the fondness for parallelism s and increm ental repetitions, that m ark P’s entire
account (Gen. 2 :2 –3 ):
And God com pleted on the sev enth day the task He had done. And He
ceased on the sev enth day from all the task He had done. And God blessed
the sev enth day and hallowed it, for on it He had ceased from all His task
that He had created to do.

We hav e here not only increm ental repetition but, as I hav e tried to show
through this rather literal translation, a tightly sy m m etrical env elope
structure, the end returning to the beginning: the first line of the passage ends
with God’s m aking or doing, as does the last, while the end of the last line, by
also introducing the seem ingly redundant phrase “God created,” takes us all the
way back to the opening of the creation story , “When God began to create.” In
P’s m agisterial form ulation, ev ery thing is ordered, set in its appointed place,
and contained within a sy m m etrical fram e.

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 All this reflects, of course, not sim ply a bundle of sty listic predilections but a
particular v ision of God, m an, and the world. Coherence is the key note of
creation. Things com e into being in orderly progression, m easured in a
num erical sequence that is defined by the sacred num ber sev en. Law,
m anifested in the sy m m etrical div idings that are the process of creation and in
the div ine speech that initiates each stage of creation, is the underly ing
characteristic of the world as God m akes it. Man, entering the picture
clim actically just before it is declared com plete on the sev enth day , is assigned a
clearly dem arcated role of dom inance in a grand hierarchy . In this v ersion of
cosm ogony , God, as Einstein was to put it in his own argum ent against
random ness, decidedly does not play dice with the univ erse, though from a
m oral or historical point of v iew that is exactly what He does in J’s story by
creating m an and wom an with their dangerous freedom of choice while
im posing upon them the responsibility of a solem n prohibition.

The redaction of the text of Genesis that has com e down to us was in all
likelihood done in Priestly circles. The Priestly editors are careful to giv e their
own v ersion of creation, P, pride of place at the v ery beginning of the book. Thus
the theology they wanted to prom ote, with its sense of cosm ic orderliness, is the
first one encountered by the audience of the redacted text. The editors, howev er,
had in their possession J’s older v ersion of creation that they seem to hav e
regarded as som ehow also authoritativ e and so in no way disposable. Ev en if
they felt m ore com fortable with the hierarchical and harm onious v ision of
things, they were obliged to put their own v ersion in dialogue with J’s m uch
m ore anthropom orphic, psy chologically dy nam ic, and ev en unruly account of
creation. Let m e try to explain how that dialogue works.

J’s strikingly different sense of the m ov em ent of creation m akes itself felt from
the outset in his sy ntax and in the rhy thm s of his prose. Instead of sty listic
balance and stately progression, he begins with a subordinate clause that leads
us into a long and sinuous com plex sentence that winds its way through details
of landscape and m eteorology to the m aking of m an (Gen. 2 :4 b–4 7 ):
On the day the LORD God m ade earth and heav ens, no shrub of the field
being y et on the earth and no plant of the field y et sprouted, for the LORD
God had not caused rain to fall on the earth and there was no hum an to

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 till the soil, and wetness would well from the earth to water all the surface
of the soil, then the LORD God fashioned the hum an, hum us from the soil,
and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the hum an becam e a
liv ing creature.

J needs this kind of ram ified sy ntax, so unlike P’s, because he constantly sees
his subject in a com plex network of relations that are causal, tem poral,
m echanical, and, later in the chapter, m oral and psy chological as well. His
prose im parts a sense of rapid and perhaps precarious forward m ov em ent v ery
different from P’s m easured parade from first day to sev enth. It is a m ov em ent
of restless hum an interaction with the env ironm ent, ev en in Eden: here m an
works the soil, which cannot realize its full inv entory of nourishing plant life
until that work has begun; in P’s v ersion, m an, m ore grandly and m ore
generally , has dom inion ov er the natural world. Man as J im agines him is m ore
essentially bound to the natural world, form ed out of a hum ble clod, his nam e,
ʾadam, in a significant ety m ological pun, deriv ed from ʾadamah, soil. He is one
with the earth as he is not in P’s hierarchical sequence; but he is also apart from
it by v irtue of the v ery faculty of consciousness that enables him to giv e things
their nam es, and by v irtue of the free will through which he will cause him self
to be banished from the Garden, henceforth to work the soil as an arduous
punishm ent rather than as a natural function.

P is interested in the large plan of creation; J is m ore interested in the

com plicated and difficult facts of hum an life in civ ilization, for which he
prov ides an initial explanation through the story of what happened in Eden.
Man culm inates the schem e of creation in P, but m an is the narrativ e center of
J’s story , which is quite another m atter. P’s v erbs for creation are “to m ake”
(ʿasoh) and “to create” (baroʾ), while J has God “fashioning” (yatzor), a word
that is used for potters and craftsm en, and also m akes him the subject of
concrete agricultural v erbs, planting and watering and causing to grow.

J’s concern with the m echanics of things is continuous with his v ision of God,
m an, and history . The world is stuff to be worked and shaped through effort, for
both m an and God; language has its role in ordering things, but it is not, as in

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P,generativ e. If m an’s role as worker of the earth is stressed at both the
beginning and the end of the Eden story , one m ight also infer that God’s work
with m an does not cease with the fashioning into creaturehood of the original
clod of earth. In this v ersion of creation, there is m oral tension between m an
and God—a notion not hinted at in P—and also, as God’s solicitude for m an’s
loneliness shows, there is div ine concern for m an. It is instructiv e that here no
speech of God occurs until He addresses m an and reflects on m an’s condition.
The v erb “to say ,” which in the first account of creation introduced each of the
div ine utterances through which the world was brought into being, here is used
to designate thought or interior speech, the brief div ine m onologue in which God
ponders m an’s solitude and resolv es to allev iate it (Gen. 2 :1 8): “And the LORD
God said, ‘It is not good for the hum an to be alone. I shall m ake him a sustainer
beside him .’”

The differences between our two v ersions are so pronounced that by now som e
readers m ay be inclined to conclude that what I hav e proposed as a
com plem entary relationship is in fact altogether a contradictory one. If,
howev er, we can escape the m odern prov incialism of assum ing that ancient
writers m ust be sim ple because they are ancient, it m ay be possible to see that
whoev er gav e shape to the integrated text chose to com bine these two v ersions
of creation at least in part because he understood that his subject was essentially
contradictory , essentially resistant to consistent linear form ulation, and that
the com bination of sources was his way of allowing it the m ost adequate literary
expression. Let m e explain this first in the notorious contradiction about the
creation of wom an, and then go on to com m ent briefly on the larger cosm ogonic
issues.

It m ay m ake no logical sense to hav e the first wom an created after the first
m an and inferior to him when we hav e already been told that she was created
at the sam e tim e and in the sam e m anner as he, but it m akes perfect sense as an
account of the contradictory facts of wom an’s role in the post-edenic schem e of
things. On the one hand, the writerredactor is a m em ber of a patriarchal
society in which wom en hav e m ore lim ited legal priv ileges and institutional
functions than do m en, and where social conv ention clearly inv ites one to see
wom an as subsidiary to m an, her proper place, in the Psalm ist’s words, as a
“fruitful v ine in the corner of y our house.” Giv en such social facts and such

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entrenched attitudes, the story of Ev e’s being m ade from an unneeded rib of the
first m an is a proper account of origins. On the other hand, our editor—one does
not readily think of him as a bachelor—surely had a fund of personal
observ ation to draw on that could lead him to conclude that wom an, contrary to
institutional definitions, could be a daunting adv ersary or worthy partner,
quite m an’s equal in a m oral or psy chological perspectiv e, capable of exerting
just as m uch power as he through her intelligent resourcefulness. If this seem s a
fanciful inference, one need only recall the resounding ev idence of subsequent
biblical narrativ e, which includes a rem arkable gallery of wom en—Rebekah,
Tam ar, Deborah, Ruth—who are not content with a v egetativ e existence in the
corner of the house but, when thwarted by the m ale world or when they find it
lacking in m oral insight or practical initiativ e, do not hesitate to take their
destiny , or the nation’s, into their own hands. In the light of this extra-
institutional awareness of wom an’s standing, the proper account of origins is a
sim ultaneous creation of both sexes, in which m an and wom an are different
aspects of the sam e div ine im age. “In the im age of God He created him . Male
and fem ale He created them ” (Gen. 1 :2 7 ). The decision to place in sequence two
ostensibly contradictory accounts of the sam e ev ent is an approxim ate
narrativ e equiv alent to the technique of post-Cubist painting that giv es us, for
exam ple, juxtaposed or superim posed, a profile and a frontal perspectiv e of the
sam e face. The ordinary ey e could nev er see these two at once, but it is the
painter’s prerogativ e to represent them as a sim ultaneous perception within the
v isual fram e of his painting, whether m erely to explore the form al relations
between the two v iews or to prov ide an encom passing representation of his
subject. Analogously , the Hebrew writer takes adv antage of the com posite
nature of his art to giv e us a tension of v iews that will gov ern m ost of the
biblical stories—first, wom an as m an’s equal sharer in dom inion, standing
exactly in the sam e relation to God as he; then, wom an as m an’s subserv ient
helpm ate, whose weakness and blandishm ents will bring such woe into the
world.

A sim ilar encom passing of div ergent perspectiv es is achiev ed through the
com bined v ersions in the broader v ision of creation, m an, and God. God is both
transcendent and im m anent (to inv oke a m uch later theological opposition),
both m agisterial in His om nipotence and activ ely , em pathically inv olv ed with

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His creation. The world is orderly , coherent, beautifully patterned, and at the
sam e tim e it is a shifting tangle of resources and topography , both a m ainstay
and a baffling challenge to m an. Hum ankind is the div inely appointed m aster
of creation and an internally div ided rebel against the div ine schem e, destined
to scrabble a painful liv ing from the soil that has been blighted because of m an.
(If the Priestly editor assum ed that the first of these sets of alternativ es was
m ore authoritativ e, he m ay well hav e accorded som e v alidity to the second set,
too, which, after all, he included in his com posite v ersion.) The creation story
m ight hav e been m ore “consistent” had it begun with Genesis 2 :4 b, but it would
hav e lost m uch of its com plexity as a satisfy ing account of a bewilderingly
com plex reality that inv olv es the elusiv e interaction of God, m an, and the
natural world. It is of course possible, as m any scholars hav e tended to assum e,
that this com plexity is the purely accidental result of som e editor’s scribal
obligation as an assem bler of traditional m aterials to include disparate sources,
but that is at least an ungenerous assum ption and, to m y m ind, an im plausible
one as well. At the v ery least, the Priestly redactor m anifests a sense that his
fa v or ed P creation story and the inherited J story can work in m utual
conv ersation.

The effectiv eness of com posite narrativ e as a purposeful technique is ev en

m ore v iv idly ev ident when the prim ary aim is the presentation of character.
The m ost elaborate biblical instance is the introduction of Dav id, which, as has
been often noted, occurs in two consecutiv e and seem ingly contradictory
v ersions (1 Sam uel 1 6 and 1 7 ). In the first account, the prophet Sam uel is sent
to Bethlehem to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as successor to Saul, whose
v iolation of div ine injunction has just disqualified him for the kingship that was
conferred on him . Sam uel, after m istaking the eldest of the brothers as the
div inely elected one, is directed by God to anoint Dav id, the y oungest (a pattern
of displacing the firstborn fam iliar from Genesis). Following the anointm ent,
Dav id is called to Saul’s court to soothe the king’s m ad fits by play ing the ly re,
and he assum es the official position of arm or-bearer to Saul. In the second
account, Dav id is still back on the farm while his older brothers (here three in
num ber rather than sev en) are serv ing in Saul’s arm y against the Philistines.
There is no m ention here of any prev ious cerem ony of anointing, no allusion to
Dav id’s m usical abilities or to a position as roy al arm or-bearer (indeed, a good

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deal is m ade of his total unfam iliarity with arm or). In this v ersion Dav id,
hav ing arriv ed on the battlefield with prov isions for his brothers, m akes his
debut by slay ing the Philistine cham pion, Goliath, and he is so unfam iliar a face
to both Saul and Abner, Saul’s com m ander-in-chief, that, at the end of the
chapter, they both confess they hav e no idea who he is or what fam ily he com es
from , and he has to identify him self to Saul. Though there is textual ev idence
that the second of the two stories introducing Dav id is itself com posite, I will
concentrate here on the broad differences between the two accounts.

Logically , of course, Saul would hav e had to m eet Dav id for the first tim e
either as m usic therapist in his court or as giant-killer on the battlefield, but he
could not hav e done both. Both stories, though drawn from disparate sources,
are necessary , howev er, in order to produce a binocular v ision of Dav id. In this
case, the inference of a deliberate decision to use two v ersions seem s especially
com pelling, for the redactor of the Dav id story , unlike the redactor of Genesis, is
not working with traditions sanctified by sev eral centuries of national
experience. One m ay infer that he had greater freedom as to what he “had” to
include than did his counterpart in Genesis, and therefore that if he chose to
com bine two v ersions of Dav id’s debut, one theological in cast and the other
folkloric, it was because both were necessary to his conception of Dav id’s
character and historical role. Much the sam e point has been m ade by Kenneth
R. R. Gros Louis in an intelligent essay on the larger Dav id story : “But surely
whoev er put the narrativ e into this final form was aware of the inconsistency
too; such inconsistency in close proxim ity in a narrativ e is m ore than an
author’s nodding; it is the equiv alent of deep sleep.” Gros Louis goes on to propose
that the two introductions of Dav id correspond to two different aspects of the
future king that are reflected in his relationship with Saul and that will rem ain
in tension throughout his story —the priv ate person and the public figure. Saul,
in his different roles as troubled indiv idual and jealous m onarch, responds in
different way s to these two aspects of Dav id. “Saul the m an can lov e his
com forter and recall the refreshm ent brought to him by his m usic; Saul the
king cannot bear to hear the Israelite wom en singing, ‘Saul has slain his
thousands, and Dav id his ten thousands.’” 4 I think Gros Louis is quite right
about the presence of a com plex interplay between the public and priv ate
aspects of Dav id throughout this extraordinary narrativ e, but those categories

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need to be supplem ented in sev eral way s in order to get a full sense of the range
of com plem entary v iewpoints that are brought to bear in the two accounts of
Dav id’s debut. It is im portant to observ e differences not only in them atic
em phasis and narrated facts but, as we hav e done with the creation story , in
m atters of sty le and narrativ e approach.

Sy m m etry , pattern, form ally defined closure, and what Buber and
Rosenzweig called Leitwortstil, a sty le gov erned by them atic key words, are all
far m ore prom inent in the first v ersion than in the second. Chapter 1 6 of 1
Sam uel begins with a dialogue between Sam uel and God, and the div ine v iew
from abov e controls ev ery thing that happens in this v ersion of the debut. God
ov ersees, God interv enes directly in the designation of His anointed. “I am
sending y ou to Jesse the Bethlehem ite,” He tells Sam uel at the outset, “for I
hav e seen Me am ong his sons a king” (1 Sam . 1 6 :1 ). The v erb “seen” (raʾoh be
...), which has the sense of “choose” in context, points neatly in two them atic
directions. It is an antony m of “reject” (maʾos be ...) and “to choose not” (loʾ
baḥor be ... ), which function as Leitwörter referring both to the turning away of
Saul and the choices not to be m ade am ong Jesse’s sons. At the sam e tim e, the
literal m eaning of the idiom , reflected in m y translation, is “to see in,” and the
v erb “to see” will be the other dom inant them atic key word of the story . If God
has already m ade His choice of the new king, why does He not tell Sam uel from
the start which of Jesse’s sons it will be? Clearly , so that a didactic ritual of true
choice after false, true sight after false, can be enacted. In the “v ertical”
perspectiv e of the story , the substantiv e exchanges are all between God and His
prophet, while dialogue between Sam uel and the town elders, Sam uel and Jesse,
is kept to a m inim um . This is how the election itself is presented:
6 . And it happened when they cam e that he saw Eliab and he said, “Ah
y es! Before the LORD stands His anointed.” 7 . And the LORD said to
Sam uel, “Look not to his appearance [marʾeihu, v erbal stem raʾoh] and to
his lofty stature, for I hav e cast him aside. For not as m an sees [does the
LORD see]. 5 For m an sees with the ey es, and the LORD sees with the
heart.” 8. And Jesse called to Abinadab and m ade him pass before
Sam uel, and he said, “This one, too, the LORD has not chosen.” 9 . And
Jesse m ade Sham m ah pass by , and he said, “This one, too, the LORD has
not chosen.” 1 0. And Jesse m ade his sev en sons pass before Sam uel, and

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 Sam uel said to Jesse, “The LORD has not chosen these.” 1 1 . And Sam uel
said to Jesse, “Are there no m ore lads?” And he said, “The y oungest still is
left, and, look, he is tending the flock.” And Sam uel said to Jesse, “Send
and fetch him , for we shall not sit to eat until he com es.” 1 2 . And he sent
and brought him . And he was ruddy , with fine ey es and goodly to look on
[roʾi, v erbal stem raʾoh]. And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him , for this
is the one.”

The whole ev ent is an exercise in seeing right, not only for Jesse and his sons
and the im plied audience of the story , but also for Sam uel, who was earlier
designated seer (roʾeh). Sam uel had first chosen as king Saul, who stood head
and shoulders abov e ordinary m en; now he nearly m akes the sam e m istake
with Jesse’s strapping firstborn, Eliab, and so God, reading his thoughts, m ust
instruct him : “Look not to his appearance and to his lofty stature.” From the
initial dialogue between Sam uel and the LORD to the final anointing of Dav id
and the descent upon him of the spirit of the LORD (1 Sam . 1 6 :1 3 ), God’s steady
perception m anifestly com m ands the scene, distinguishing, as hum an ey es
could not, between Eliab’s prepossessing appearance, which betokens no
worthiness to rule, and Dav id’s goodly appearance, which happens to be joined
with an inner nature m ade to do great things. Hum an interactions here are
held at a distance, sty lized, to m ake the perfect clarity of div ine perception
them atically transparent. We m ov e in form ulaic repetition from the first son to
the sev enth, the “et cetera principle” being inv oked after the third son so that
the rapid m ov em ent to the rev elatory point—the y oungest son called in from
the flock—is not bogged down. The absolute and continuous interv ention by God
that we see here, m oreov er, is quite unty pical of the Dav id story as a whole.

The spirit that descends on Dav id, seizes him , as it did the Judges before him ,
then becom es the them atic key word of the second half of the chapter. The spirit
of the LORD that grips Dav id “had turned away from Saul” (1 Sam . 1 6 :1 4 ), and
in its place the king is wracked by “an ev il spirit from the LORD.” When his
courtiers suggest ly re-play ing as a rem edy , Saul enjoins them , “See [reʾu,
v erbal stem raʾoh] for m e a m an skilled in play ing” (1 Sam . 1 6 :1 7 ), and one of
them v olunteers, “I hav e seen [raʾiti] a son of Jesse the Bethlehem ite, skilled in

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play ing, a v aliant fellow and a warrior, prudent in speech, a good-looking m an,
and the LORD is with him ” (1 Sam . 1 6 :1 8). The reference to Dav id’s m artial
prowess looks suspiciously like an attem pt to harm onize Chapter 1 6 and Chapter
1 7 , perhaps by a later editor, for there has been no suggestion up to this point
that the y oung shepherd Dav id had any m ilitary experience, and if he were
already known as a form idable warrior, it would m ake no sense for Saul to giv e
him the m enial role of arm or-bearer (1 Sam . 1 6 :2 1 ). Otherwise, Dav id’s
appearance in court, ly re in hand, is beautifully consistent with the preceding
story of his anointm ent. Sam uel had anointed him “in the m idst of his
brothers,” that is, within the secrecy of the fam ily circle, so it is of course not
known in court that he has any pretensions to the throne. Because, howev er,
the spirit of the LORD has descended on him , his personal allure, his gift for
succeeding, hav e begun to m ake them selv es felt, and people already sense, as
with Joseph, that “the LORD is with him .” Hav ing been graced with the spirit,
Dav id is then seen exerting m astery , through song, ov er the realm of spirits, a
point underscored by a pun in the last v erse of the chapter (1 Sam . 1 6 :2 3 ):
“And so, when the [ev il] spirit [ruaḥ] of God was upon Saul, Dav id would take up
the ly re and play , and Saul would find relief [ravaḥ], and it would be well with
him , and the ev il spirit [ruaḥ] would turn away from him .”

The second v ersion of Dav id’s debut, alm ost three tim es the length of the first,
is too long for us to consider in close detail. The relativ e length of the story ,
howev er, reflects a v ery different conception of how Dav id’s fitness for the
throne is first rev ealed. This chapter is as close as the Hebrew Bible com es to an
“epic” presentation of its m aterials. Unlike the prev ious chapter, where the
three points of geographical reference—Bethlehem , the court, and Sam uel’s
hom e at Ram ah—are sim ply stated, Chapter 1 7 of 1 Sam uel giv es us an
elaborate panoram a of the geographical deploy m ent of the two arm ies, then a
detailed description of Goliath’s arm or and weapons. The second v ersion is m uch
m ore concerned with how Dav id will operate within the spatial coordinates and
with the m aterial instrum ents of the political and m ilitary realm , and so it
adopts a sty le that draws us at once into the thick of historical experience. The
m otif of the unknown y oung m an who astonishes his elders and slay s the dread
giant or m onster is com m on to m any folkloric traditions, but here it is wov en
persuasiv ely into the texture of historical fiction, giv en the concreteness of

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v iv idly v erisim ilar dialogue (Dav id’s angry exchange with his contem ptuous
big brother Eliab, his v erbal parry ing with Goliath) quite unlike the sty lized
and form ulaic dialogue of the preceding story . God does not speak at all here and
is not a direct presence in the action. Rather, the hum an hero of the story
inv okes Him in hurling back the enem y ’s challenge: “You com e to m e with
sword and spear and jav elin, and I com e to y ou with the nam e of the LORD of
Hosts, God of the battle lines of Israel that y ou hav e insulted. This day shall the
LORD giv e y ou ov er into m y hands” (1 Sam . 1 7 :4 5–4 6 ). Dav id’s conquest by
slingshot is a literal enactm ent of the m onotheistic principle of “not by sword
and spear does the LORD deliv er” that he announces to Goliath.

It should be observ ed that in Chapter 1 6 Dav id nev er speaks, and does v ery
little, being the subject of only two v erbs, “to take up” and “to play ” at the end
of the chapter. Here, on the other hand, he speaks at great length, in fact shows
him self a m aster of rhetoric (in keeping with the epithet “prudent in speech”
assigned to him in 1 Sam . 1 6 :1 8); and he is, of course, a bold, adept, and
energetic perform er of actions. At the narrativ e clim ax of Chapter 1 7 , v erses
4 5–51 , he is the subject of fourteen different v erbs—rushing, running, taking,
hurling, hitting, cutting, killing—in quick succession. In the first v ersion,
Dav id’s pastoral occupation is a static though probably also sy m bolic fact, since
“shepherd” is a recurrent biblical epithet for leader. In the second v ersion,
Dav id cites his shepherd’s experience as ev idence of the practical training he
has undergone to fit him for dangerous com bat: just as he has repeatedly
destroy ed lion and bear at close quarters in protecting his flock, he will fell the
ov erweening Philistine. He does not m ention the lethal skill with the slingshot
that he has also acquired in his work as a shepherd, but he will soon
dem onstrate that on the battlefield.

What is gained for the general presentation of Dav id by putting these two
v ersions together? It m ight be noted that there is an approxim ate analogy to the
interaction of the two sources for the creation story in Genesis (though I am by
no m eans suggesting that one deriv es from P and the other from J!): a hum an-
centered, richly detailed “horizontal” v iew following a m ore concise, m ore
sy m m etrically sty lized, “v ertical” v iew that m ov es from God abov e to the world
below. These two v iews correspond in part, but only in part, to the public and
priv ate Dav id, the Dav id Saul env ies, then hates as his riv al, and the one whom

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he lov es as his com forter. Dav id will be the brilliant warrior-king and (as
Shim ei of the house of Saul one day will call him ) the “m an of blood,” and for
this identity the Goliath story is the fitting introduction. But he is also to figure
as the eloquent elegist, the com poser of psalm s, the sensitiv e and passionate
m an who lov es Jonathan and weeps for his dead sons; and this side of him is
properly introduced in the story of his debut as a court m usician with the gift of
driv ing out ev il spirits through his song.

These two v ersions are not only functions of Dav id’s character but of what we
are to m ake of his election as king. In the first account, his election is absolute,
an unam biguously div ine choice, perhaps m ade because of what God knows
about Dav id’s special nature, but clearly bestowed upon him as a gift, or a fate,
without the slightest initiativ e on his part. In the second account, Dav id secures
the first toehold in his clim b from sheepfold to throne by his own bold action—
and in so doing, as the dialogue at the end of the chapter between Saul and
Abner, then Saul and Dav id, intim ates, he stirs the first feelings of unease in the
reigning king that a dangerous riv al m ay hav e com e forth from Bethlehem . In
the first v ersion, Dav id is not referred to as m an or boy , except in the possibly
interpolated epithet of the courtier, who calls him a “m an of war,” for he is
essentially im agined as a com ely receptacle for the div ine spirit that enters into
him . In the second v ersion, Goliath the cham pion (literally , “the m an of the
spaces between the two arm ies”) inv ites a “m an” to com e out against him and is
enraged when he finds him self confronted with a m ere “lad” (1 Sam . 1 7 :4 2 )—a
lad who will of course brilliantly prov e his m anhood by toppling his enorm ous
adv ersary . To be sure, ev en in the second v ersion, Dav id perform s his heroic act
with the explicit consciousness that he is serv ing the ends of the om nipotent God
of Israel; but the joining of the two accounts leav es us sway ing in the dy nam ic
interplay between two theologies, two conceptions of kingship and history , two
v iews of Dav id the m an. In one, the king is im agined as God’s instrum ent,
elected through God’s own initiativ e, m anifesting his authority by
com m anding the realm of spirits good and ev il, a figure who brings healing and
inspires lov e. In the other account, the king’s election is, one m ight say , ratified
rather than initiated by God; instead of the spirit descending, we hav e a y oung
m an ascending through his own resourcefulness, cool courage, and quick
reflexes, and also through his rhetorical skill. All this will lead not directly to

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the throne but, as things usually happen in the m ixed m edium of history , to a
captaincy ; further m ilitary successes, a dev oted following; the prov ocation of
jealousy in the king, which brings about his banishm ent; a career of daring
action, subterfuge, hardship, and danger; a bloody civ il war; and only then the
throne. Without both these v ersions of Dav id’s beginnings and his claim to
legitim acy as m onarch, the Hebrew writer would hav e conv ey ed less than what
he conceiv ed to be the full truth about his subject.

Poetry and fiction, as literary theorists from the Russian Form alists and the
Anglo-Am erican New Critics onward hav e often observ ed, inv olv e a
condensation of m eanings, a kind of thickening of discourse, in which m ultiple
and ev en m utually contradictory perceptions of the sam e object can be fused
within a single linguistic structure. An exem plary text in just this regard to set
alongside 1 Sam uel 1 6 and 1 7 is Andrew Marv ell’s “An Horatian Ode Upon
Crom well’s Return from Ireland.” When the poem was written in 1 6 50, Marv ell
was m ov ing from his early sy m pathy for the roy alist cause to a sincere
adv ocacy of the new rev olutionary regim e, and the poem would seem to
em body antithetical v iews of the form idable Crom well, who had just subdued
(and fearfully dev astated) Ireland, antithetical v iews held together under high
tension. Thus, Marv ell writes that Crom well
Could by industrious Valour climbe
To ruine the great Work of Time,
And cast the Kingdome old
I nto another Mold.

As elsewhere in the poem , v irtually ev ery phrase is abundantly susceptible of

opposite constructions: Crom well m ay be the paragon of political greatness, the
m an with the courage and resoluteness to change the course of history ; and he
m ay be an awesom e horsem an of the apocaly pse, ruthlessly lay ing waste all
that tim e has patiently wrought. In the sty listic com pression of the poem , he is
both at once, or constantly threatens to be one when he seem s to be the other.

In biblical narrativ e, this kind of purposeful am biguity of a single statem ent

m ay occur, as I hav e suggested in discussing characterization, in the selectiv e

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reticences of the narrator’s reports and in the sudden breaking off of dialogue as
well. In regard to larger blocks of narrativ e m aterial, the characteristic biblical
m ethod for incorporating m ultiple perspectiv es appears to hav e been not a
fusion of v iews in a single utterance but a m ontage of v iewpoints arranged in
sequence. Such a form ula, of course, cannot sm ooth away all the perplexities of
scribal and editorial work with which the biblical text confronts us; but we are
well adv ised to keep in m ind as readers that these ancient writers (and their
redactors), like later ones, wanted to fashion a literary form that m ight
em brace the abiding com plexity of their subjects. The m onotheistic rev olution
of biblical Israel was a continuing and disquieting one. It left little m argin for
neat and confident v iews about God, the created world, history , and m an as
political anim al or m oral agent, for it repeatedly had to m ake sense of the
intersection of incom patibles—the relativ e and the absolute, hum an
im perfection and div ine perfection, the brawling chaos of historical experience
and God’s prom ise to fulfill a design in history . The biblical outlook is inform ed, I
think, by a sense of stubborn contradiction, of a profound and ineradicable
untidiness in the nature of things, and it is toward the expression of such a sense
of m oral and historical reality that the com posite artistry of the Bible is
directed.

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 8

Narration and Knowledge

THE CONCEPTION OF biblical narrativ e as prose fiction that I hav e been

proposing entails an em phasis on deliberate artistry and ev en play fulness that
m ay seem a little odd according to com m on notions, both popular and scholarly ,
of what the Bible is. Hav ing considered som e of the m ajor aspects of the Bible’s
narrativ e art, I think it m ay be useful now to restate a basic question raised
near the outset of this inquiry . The ancient Hebrew writers, or at least the ones
whose work has been preserv ed because it was ev entually canonized in the
biblical corpus, were obv iously m otiv ated by a sense of high theological purpose.
Habitants of a tiny and often im perfectly m onotheistic island in a v ast and
alluring sea of paganism , they wrote with an intent, frequently urgent
awareness of fulfilling or perpetuating through the act of writing a m om entous
rev olution in consciousness. It is obv ious enough why the Prophets should hav e
used poetry , with its resonances, em phases, significant sy m m etries, and
forceful im ageries, to conv ey their v ision, for prophetic poetry is a form of direct
address that is heightened, m ade m em orable and alm ost inexorable through the
rhetorical resources of form al v erse. By contrast, biblical narrativ e, if it is also
to be construed as a kind of discourse on God’s purposes in history and His
requirem ents of hum anity , is indirect discourse on those subjects (the one great
exception being the Book of Deuteronom y , which is cast in direct discourse as
Moses’s v aledictory address to the people of Israel). The degree of mediation
inv olv ed in talking about what the LORD requires by m aking characters talk
and by reporting their actions and entanglem ents opens up what m ay seem to
the m oralistic theist a Pandora’s box. For would it not be friv olous on the part of
an anony m ous Hebrew writer charged with the task of reform ulating sacred
traditions for posterity to indulge in the writerly pleasures of sound-play and
word-play , of inv enting v iv id characters with their own quirks and speech
habits, of lim ning with all the resources of sty listic ingenuity the com ic
frustration of a failed seduction, the slow diplom atic progress of bargaining ov er
a burial site, the wrangling of brothers, the foolishness of kings?

It seem s to m e perfectly plausible to assum e, as I suggested earlier, that the

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m akers of biblical narrativ e gav e them selv es to these v arious pleasures of
inv ention and expression because, whatev er their sense of div inely warranted
m ission, they were, after all, writers, m ov ed to work out their v ision of hum an
nature and history in a particular m edium , prose fiction, ov er which they had
technical m astery , and in the m anipulation of which they found continual
delight. I think such an inference is am ply confirm ed by the fine articulations of
the actual texts the biblical writers produced, though it m ay require an act of
m ental reorientation to see a closer generic link—the consideration of genre here
is crucial—between Genesis and Tom Jones than between Genesis and the
Summa Theologiae or the m y stic Book of Creation. This notion, howev er, of the
biblical writers’ v ocation for fiction needs to be am plified. If fiction is a form of
play , it is also, ev en in ultim ate instances of flaunted play fulness, like
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tristram Shandy, and Ulysses, a form of play that
inv olv es a particular m ode of knowledge.

We learn through fiction because we encounter in it the translucent im ages

the writer has cunningly projected out of an intuitiv ely grasped fund of
experience not dissim ilar to our own, only shaped, defined, ordered, probed in
way s we nev er m anage in the m uddled and diffuse transactions of our own
liv es. The figures of fiction need not be v erisim ilar in an obv ious way to em body
such truths, for exaggeration or sty lization m ay be a m eans of exposing what is
ordinarily hidden, and fantasy m ay faithfully represent an inner or suppressed
reality : Uncle Toby and Mr. Micawber, Panurge and Gregor Sam sa, are v ehicles
of fictional knowledge as m uch as Anna Karenina and Dorothea Brooke. What I
should like to stress is that fiction is a m ode of knowledge not only because it is a
certain way of im agining characters and ev ents in their shifting, elusiv e,
rev elatory interconnections but also because it possesses a certain repertoire of
techniques for telling a story . The writer of fiction has the technical flexibility ,
for exam ple, to inv ent for each character in dialogue a language that reflects, as
recorded speech in ordinary discourse would not necessarily reflect, the absolute
indiv iduality of the character, his or her precise location at a giv en intersection
with other characters in a particular chain of ev ents. The writer of fiction
exercises an ev en m ore spectacular freedom in his ability to shuttle rapidly
between laconic sum m ary and leisurely scenic representation, between
panoram ic ov erv iew and v isual close-up, in his capacity to penetrate the

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em otions of his characters, im itate or sum m arize their inner speech, analy ze
their m otiv es, m ov e from the narrativ e present to the near or distant past and
back again, and by all these m eans to control what we learn and what we are
left to ponder about the characters and the m eaning of the story . (In nearly all
these regards, a m ore form ulaic m ode of story telling like the folktale or ev en
som e kinds of epic has a m ore lim ited range of possibilities.)

In chapter 2 , I contended that the biblical authors were am ong the pioneers of
prose fiction in the Western tradition. Let m e now add the suggestion that they
were im pelled to the creation of this new supple narrativ e m edium at least in
part because of the kind of knowledge it could m ake possible. The narrators of
the biblical stories are of course “om niscient,” and that theological term
transferred to narrativ e technique has special justification in their case, for the
biblical narrator is presum ed to know, quite literally , what God knows, as on
occasion he m ay rem ind us by reporting God’s assessm ents and intentions, or
ev en what He say s to Him self. The biblical Prophet speaks in God’s nam e—”thus
saith the LORD”—as a highly v isible hum an instrum ent for God’s m essage,
which often seem s to seize him against his will. The biblical narrator, quite
unlike the Prophet, div ests him self of a personal history and the m arks of
indiv idual identity in order to assum e for the scope of his narrativ e a godlike
com prehensiv eness of knowledge that can encom pass ev en God Him self. It is a
dizzy ing epistem ological trick done with narrativ e m irrors: despite
anthropom orphism , the whole spectrum of biblical thought presupposes an
absolute cleav age between m an and God; m an cannot becom e God, and God (in
contrast to later Christian dev elopm ents) does not becom e m an; and y et the
selfeffacing figures who narrate the biblical tales, by a tacit conv ention in
which no attention is paid to their lim ited hum an status, can adopt the all-
knowing, unfailing perspectiv e of God. Indeed, in som e of the oldest narrativ e
docum ents, it appears at tim es that God’s knowledge, in contrast to that of the
narrator, has its lim its.

The biblical tale m ight usefully be regarded as a narrativ e experim ent in the
possibilities of m oral, spiritual, and historical knowledge, undertaken through a
process of studied contrasts between the v ariously lim ited knowledge of the
hum an characters and the div ine om niscience quietly but firm ly represented
by the narrator. From tim e to tim e, a hum an figure is granted special

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knowledge or foreknowledge, but only through God’s discretionary help: Joseph
can interpret dream s truly , as he repeatedly affirm s, only because the
interpretation of dream s is the LORD’s. Various of the biblical protagonists are
v ouchsafed prom ises, enigm atic predictions, but the future, like the m oral
reality of their contem poraries, rem ains for the m ost part v eiled from them ,
ev en from an Abraham or a Moses who has been priv ileged with the m ost direct
personal rev elation of God’s presence and will. Dedication to a div inely certified
career of v isionary leadership is itself no escape from the lim itations of hum an
knowledge: Sam uel the seer, as we had occasion to note, m istakes phy sical for
regal stature in the case of both Saul and Eliab, and has to undergo an object
lesson in the way God sees, which is not with the ey es but with the heart—the
heart in biblical phy siology being the seat of understanding rather than of
feeling. Hum an reality , perhaps m ost m em orably illustrated in the cy cle of
stories from Jacob’s birth to his death in Egy pt with Joseph at his bedside, is a
laby rinth of antagonism s, rev ersals, deceptions, shady deals, outright lies,
disguises, m isleading appearances, and am biguous portents. While the narrator
sees the laby rinth deploy ed before him in its exact intricate design, the
characters generally hav e only broken threads to grasp as they seek their way .

We are nev er in serious doubt that the biblical narrator knows all there is to
know about the m otiv es and feelings, the m oral nature and spiritual condition
of his characters, but, as we hav e seen on repeated occasions, he is highly
selectiv e about sharing this om niscience with his readers. Were he to inv ite our
full participation in his com prehensiv e knowledge, in the m anner of a
discursiv e Victorian nov elist, the effect would be to open our ey es and m ake us
“becom e like God, knowing good and ev il.” His ty pically m onotheistic decision is
to lead us to know as flesh-and-blood knows: character is rev ealed prim arily
through speech, action, gesture, with all the am biguities that entails; m otiv e is
frequently , though not inv ariably , left in a penum bra of doubt; often we are
able to draw plausible inferences about the personages and their destinies, but
m uch rem ains a m atter of conjecture or ev en of teasing m ultiple possibilities.

All this, howev er, is not to suggest that the Hebrew Bible is inform ed by the
epistem ological skepticism of fictions like Jam es’s The Turn of the Screw, Kafka’s
The Castle, and Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy. There is a horizon of perfect knowledge
in biblical narrativ e, but it is a horizon we are perm itted to glim pse only in the

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m ost m om entary and fragm entary way s. The narrator intim ates a m eaningful
pattern in the ev ents through a v ariety of technical procedures, m ost of them
m odes of indirection. In the purposeful reticence of this kind of narration, the
characters retain their aura of enigm a, their ultim ate im penetrability at least
to the hum an ey es with which perforce we v iew them . At the sam e tim e,
howev er, the om niscient narrator conv ey s a sense that personages and ev ents
produce a certain stable significance, one that in part can be m easured by the
v ary ing distances of the characters from div ine knowledge, by the course
through which som e of them are m ade to pass from dangerous ignorance to
necessary knowledge of self and other, and of God’s way s.

The preem inent instance of biblical narrativ e as a fictional experim ent in

knowledge is the story of Joseph and his brothers, for in it the central actions
turn on the axis of true knowledge v ersus false, from the sev enteen-y ear-old
Joseph’s dream s of grandeur to his clim actic confrontation with his brothers in
Egy pt twenty -two y ears later. This them e of knowledge is form ally enunciated
through the paired key words, haker, “recognize,” and yadoa’, “know,” that run
through the story (the French connaître and savoir m ay indicate the distinction
between the term s better than these English equiv alents). Joseph is of course
the m agisterial knower in this story , but at the outset ev en he has a lot to learn
—painfully , as m oral learning often occurs. In his early dream s, he as y et knows
not what he knows about his own destiny , and those dream s that will prov e
prophetic m ight well seem at first the reflex of a spoiled adolescent’s grandiosity ,
quite of a piece with his nasty habit of tale-bearing against his brothers and
with his insensitiv ity to their feelings, obv iously encouraged by his father’s
flagrant indulgence. The heretofore shrewd Jacob on his part is just as blind—
and will rem ain so two decades later—as his old father, Isaac, was before him . He
witlessly prov okes the jealousy of the ten sons he had by his unlov ed wife Leah
and by the concubines; then he allows him self to be duped about the actual fate
of Joseph at least in part because of his excessiv e lov e for the boy and because of
his rather m elodram atic propensity to play the role of sufferer. Finally , the ten
brothers are ignorant of Joseph’s real nature and destiny , of the consequences of
their own behav ior, of the ineluctable feelings of guilt they will suffer because of
their crim e, and, clim actically , of Joseph’s identity when he stands before them
as v iceroy of Egy pt. Ev ents, or rather ev ents aided by Joseph’s m anipulation,

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force them to knowledge and self-knowledge, this arduous transition prov iding
the final resolution of the whole story .

It m ay be instructiv e to look closely at this grand clim ax of the Joseph story ,

not only because it illustrates so v iv idly the connections between fiction and
knowledge but also because, with the author’s extraordinary technical
v irtuosity (which we observ ed before in our readings of Genesis 3 8 and 3 9 ),
these episodes prov ide a splendid sy nthesis of the v arious artful procedures of
biblical narrativ e that we hav e been considering. The entire conclusion, from
Jacob’s dispatch of the ten brothers to Egy pt in order to buy food to their second
return to Canaan, when they inform their father that the long-m ourned Joseph
is aliv e and ruler of Egy pt, is one tightly interwov en whole (ev en as it splices
together two different sources), but it is unfortunately too long to exam ine here
v erse by v erse. A close reading, howev er, of Genesis 4 2 , which reports the
brothers’ first encounter with Joseph in Egy pt together with their return to
Jacob in Canaan, should giv e an adequate idea of the com plex interplay of
narrativ e m eans through which the writer richly renders them e, m otiv e, and
character. Since this chapter is not a relativ ely self-contained unit, like Genesis
3 8, but rather the first m ov em ent in the clim ax of the story , I shall then
proceed to com m ent briefly on how what is artfully articulated here is
continued, dev eloped, and brought to a resolution in the next three chapters.

Jacob, we should recall, has been out of the picture entirely since the end of
Genesis 3 7 , when his sons brought him Joseph’s blood-soaked tunic and he drew
the expected catastrophic conclusions from it. At that juncture, the sons m erely
asked him to recognize the garm ent, while, in a paroxy sm of grief, he did m ost
of the talking. Now, twenty -two y ears later and after two consecutiv e y ears of
sev ere fam ine, Jacob does all the talking:
1 . And Jacob saw that there were prov isions in Egy pt, and Jacob said to
his sons, “Why are y ou fearful?” 2 . And he said, “Look, I hav e heard that
there are prov isions in Egy pt. Go down there and get us prov isions from
there that we m ay liv e and not die.” 3 . And the ten brothers of Joseph
went down to buy grain from Egy pt. 4 . But Benjam in, Joseph’s brother,
Jacob did not send with his brothers, for he thought, Lest harm befall
him . 5. And the sons of Israel cam e to buy prov isions am ong those who
cam e, for there was fam ine in the land of Canaan.

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 Jacob sees that there is grain to be bought in Egy pt, while his sons for the
m om ent seem to be fearful or looking only at each other (the v erb is
am biguous), an apt introduction to the series of ev ents in which they will be
forced to confront one another ov er their past actions. What is ev en m ore
prom inent as an introductory note is the fact that this segm ent of the story
starts with the brothers inactiv e, m ade the object of a rebuke. There is a hiatus
of silence between v erse 1 and v erse 2 , between “Jacob said” and his say ing
again, a silence that tends to confirm Jacob’s charge that his sons are sim ply
standing there staring at one another when urgent action has to be taken. (This
is still another illustration of the rule of thum b we observ ed in chapter 3 that
when biblical dialogue is entirely one-sided or when an expected response is cut
off, we are inv ited to draw inferences about the characters and their relations,
and when the form ula for introducing speech is repeated with the sam e
character continuing to speak, there is a problem of response on the part of the
persons addressed.) The present passage giv es us an exact rev ersal of the roles
play ed by Jacob and his sons at the end of Genesis 3 4 , the conclusion of the story
of the rape of Dinah. There, when Jacob upbraids Sim eon and Lev i for
m assacring the m ale population of Shechem , they answer, “Like a whore should
our sister be treated?” (Gen. 3 4 :3 1 ), and on these defiant words the story
concludes, Jacob’s final silence prov iding an index of his im potence in the face of
his v iolent sons. The brothers, then, follow their father’s com m and, in v irtual or
actual silence, and the narrator is careful to inform us that they are ten when
they go down to Egy pt, for the exact num ber of the brothers, indicating who is
present and who is absent, will be im portant in what ensues. Though the ten are
quite naturally identified as “the sons of Israel” when they arriv e in Egy pt,
em issaries of their patriarchal father, as they set out they are called “Joseph’s
brothers.” They are headed, of course, for an ultim ate test of the nature of their
brotherhood with Joseph, a bond that they hav e denied by selling him into
slav ery and that they will now be forced to recognize in a new way . When
Benjam in is designated “Joseph’s brother,” the phrase m eans som ething
different genealogically and em otionally , for he is Joseph’s full brother, the only
other son of Rachel. There is, then, a delicate play of am biguous im plications in
v erses 3 and 4 as we m ov e from “Joseph’s brothers” to “Joseph’s brother” and

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“his [Benjam in’s] brothers,” and this interplay brings into the foreground the
whole v exed question of fraternity soon to be dram atically resolv ed. We are told
nothing of the ten brothers’ response to their father’s withholding of Benjam in,
a repetition of the priv ileged treatm ent he once gav e Joseph. The dénouem ent
will in fact hinge on their ability to accept with full filial em pathy this special
concern of their father’s for his rem aining son by Rachel.

At this point, the narrator, in the characteristic rush of biblical narrativ e to

the essential m om ent, catapults the brothers from Canaan to Egy pt and into the
presence of Joseph. The central narrativ e ev ent will now be rendered, as the
Hebrew writers ty pically do, through dialogue, though each of the succinct
interv entions of the narrator is tactically effectiv e and them atically rev ealing,
beginning with the ostensibly superfluous observ ation about Joseph’s status
that opens this section. Here is the entire account of the brothers’ first v isit to
Egy pt, up to the point where Joseph will giv e the com m and for their silv er to be
slipped back into their packs, an episode we hav e already considered in
connection with the issue of com posite narrativ e.
6 . As for Joseph, he was the regent of the land, he was the prov ider to all
the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers cam e and bowed down to
him , their faces to the ground. 7 . And Joseph saw his brothers and
recognized them , and he play ed the stranger to them and spoke harshly
to them and said to them , “Where hav e y ou com e from ?” And they said,
“From the land of Canaan, to buy food.” 8. And Joseph recognized his
brothers but they did not recognize him . 9 . And Joseph rem em bered the
dream s he had dream ed about them , and he said to them , “You are spies!
To see the land’s nakedness y ou hav e com e.” 1 0. And they said to him ,
“No, m y lord, for y our serv ants hav e com e to buy food. 1 1 . We are all the
sons of one m an. We are honest. Your serv ants would nev er be spies.” 1 2 .
And he said to them , “No! For the land’s nakedness y ou hav e com e to see.”
1 3 . And they said, “Twelv e brothers y our serv ants are, we are the sons of
one m an in the land of Canaan, and, look, the y oungest is now with our
father, and one is no m ore.” 1 4 . And Joseph said to them , “That’s just
what I told y ou, y ou are spies. 1 5. In this shall y ou be tested—by Pharaoh!
You shall not leav e this place unless y our y oungest brother com es here.
1 6 . Send one of y ou to bring y our brother, and as for the rest of y ou, y ou

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 will be detained, and y our words will be tested as to whether the truth is
with y ou, and if not, by Pharaoh, y ou m ust be spies!” 1 7 . And he put
them under guard for three day s. 1 8. And Joseph said to them on the
third day , “Do this and liv e, for I fear God 1 9 . If y ou are honest, let one of
y ou brothers be detained in this v ery guardhouse, and the rest of y ou go
forth and bring back prov isions to stav e off the fam ine in y our hom es. 2 0.
And y our y oungest brother y ou shall bring to m e, so that y our words
m ay be confirm ed and y ou need not die.” And so they did. 2 1 . And they
said each to his brother, “Alas, we are guilty for our brother, whose
m ortal distress we saw when he pleaded with us and we did not listen.
That is why this distress has ov ertaken us.” 2 2 . Then Reuben spoke out to
them in these words: “Didn’t I say to y ou, ‘Do not sin against the boy ,’ and
y ou would not listen? And now, look, his blood is requited.” 2 3 . And they
did not know that Joseph understood [literally , “was listening”], for there
was an interpreter between them . 2 4 . And he turned away from them
and wept and returned to them and spoke to them . And he took Sim eon
from them and placed him in fetters before their ey es.

We hardly needed to be told that Joseph was regent of Egy pt and chief
prov isioner (v erse 6 ) because both his inv estm ent in high office and his
econom ic policy were related in detail in the last part of the preceding chapter.
The them atic utility , howev er, of repeating this inform ation in sum m ary form
just as the brothers arriv e is ev ident. Joseph’s two dream s are here literally
fulfilled, the dream of the sun and m oon and stars bowing down to him linked
m ore directly to his role as v izier, the dream of sheav es of grain bowing down to
him pointing m ore particularly to his role as prov isioner. The brothers then
enact that long-ago dream t-of prostration, a gesture of absolute obeisance
concretized by the addition of the em phatic phrase “their faces to the ground.”
They , of course, are unaware of what the narrator rem inds us (flaunting his
om niscience in order to underline their ignorance): that their essential identity
here is as “Joseph’s brothers” (v erse 6 ), and that it is Joseph who is v izier and
dispenser of prov isions. Their ignorance here of Joseph’s actual identity is an
ironic com plem ent to their earlier failure to recognize his true destiny . The
opposition between Joseph’s knowledge (which is also the narrator’s) and the

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brothers’ ignorance is focused through the insistence of a Leitwort that figured
earlier in the story : he recognizes them , they recognize him not; and in a pun
characteristic of Leitwortstil, he m akes him self a stranger or seem s a stranger to
them , vayitnaker, a v erb with the sam e root, nkr, as “recognize,” haker.

Verse 9 , in which Joseph rem em bers his early dream s, is one of those rare
m om ents in the Bible when a narrator chooses not only to giv e us tem porary
access to the inward experience of a character but also to report the character’s
consciousness of his past. That unusual note is entirely apt here both because
Joseph him self is struck by the way past dream s hav e turned into present fact,
and because he will force his brothers into a confrontation with their own past.
The two prev ious episodes of the Joseph story (Genesis 4 0 and 4 1 ) had been
dev oted to knowledge of the future—Joseph’s interpretations of the dream s of his
two fellow prisoners, then of Pharaoh’s two dream s. Genesis 4 2 , by contrast, is
dev oted to knowledge of the past, which, unlike knowledge of the future, is not a
guide to policy but a way of com ing to term s with one’s m oral history , a way of
working toward psy chological integration.

No causal connection is specified between the fact of Joseph’s rem em bering his
dream s and the accusation of espionage he im m ediately lev els against his
brothers, a characteristic biblical reticence that allows for ov erlapping
possibilities of m otiv e. The narrator presum ably knows the connection or
connections but prefers to leav e us guessing. Does the recollection of the dream s,
coupled with the sight of the prostrate brothers, trigger a whole train of
m em ories in Joseph, from the brothers’ scornful anger after his report of the
dream s to his terror in the pit, not knowing whether the brothers had left him
there to die? Does Joseph now feel anger and an im pulse to punish his brothers,
or is he chiefly trium phant, m ov ed to play the inquisitor in order to act out still
further the term s of his dream s, in which the brothers m ust repeatedly address
him self-effacingly as “m y lord” and identify them selv es as “y our serv ants”? Is
he m ov ed chiefly by m istrust, considering his brothers’ past behav ior? Is the
accusation of espionage m erely the m ost conv enient way he as v iceroy can
threaten these foreigners, or does he sense som e underly ing affinity between the
deceptiv eness of spy ing and the deceptiv eness of fraternal treachery ? One is
ev en led to wonder whether the reiterated phrase, “the land’s nakedness,”
m ight not hav e a special psy chological resonance for Joseph in regard to what

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he perceiv es to be his brothers’ relation to him and to his father. All the other
biblical occurrences of the com m on idiom “to see the nakedness of” or “to
uncov er the nakedness of” are explicitly sexual, either referring to incest (it is
precisely the phrase used for the act Ham perpetrates on his father, Noah) or to
sham eful sexual exposure, and perhaps Joseph feels a kind of incestuous v iolence
in what the brothers hav e done to him and through him to his father. Reuben,
it m ay be relev ant to recall, the firstborn of the ten, actually lay with Bilhah,
Jacob’s concubine and Rachel’s slav egirl and conjugal surrogate, not long after
Rachel’s death, when Joseph was still a boy . Perhaps none of these inferences is
absolutely inev itable, but all are distinctly possible, and the narrator’s refusal
to supply specific connections between Joseph’s rem em bering and his speaking
conv ey s a rich sense of how the present is ov erdeterm ined by the past; for in this
characteristic biblical perspectiv e no sim ple linear statem ent of causation can
adequately represent the density and the m ultiplicity of any person’s m otiv es
and em otions. Joseph is not unknowable either to God or to the narrator but he
m ust rem ain in certain respects opaque because he is a hum an being and we,
the readers of the story , see him with hum an ey es.

The entire dialogue between Joseph and his brothers is rem arkable for the
way that words, creating the fragile surface of speech, repeatedly plum b depths
of m oral relation of which the brothers are alm ost totally unaware and which
ev en Joseph grasps only in part. Ostensibly a political interrogation, it is really
the first of three clim actic dialogues between Joseph and his brothers about
their shared past and the nature of their fraternal bond. The ten brothers, of
course, are throughout the object of dram atic irony , not knowing what both
Joseph and we know, for exam ple, when they announce, “We are the sons of one
m an” (v erse 1 1 ). (The double edge of this statem ent was not lost on earlier
com m entators. Thus Rashi, the great m ediev al French Hebrew exegete,
observ es: “They had a sudden flash of div ine inspiration and included him with
them selv es.”) But this is dram atic irony that outdoes itself through a series of
psy chologically fraught double m eanings that trace the chief conv olutions of
their troubled fraternity . We are twelv e, the brothers tell Joseph (for despite the
m ore logical translation, “we were,” the Hebrew of v erse 1 3 is cast as a present-
tense statem ent). Only the two sons of Rachel are distinguished from the twelv e:
the y oungest one is with his father and another, also unnam ed, is no m ore. The

2 00
am biguity of this euphem ism for death—it m ight also m ean sim ply “is not” or
“is absent”—aptly reflects the am biguity of the brothers’ intentions toward
Joseph and the uncertainty of their knowledge about what has becom e of him .
First they had thought of actually killing him , and Reuben, who tried to sav e
him and found the pit em pty , apparently still im agines (v erse 2 2 ) that Joseph
was killed. In any case, hav ing sent Joseph southward to a distant slav e m arket,
the brothers m ight properly think him gone forev er, as good as dead, or perhaps
after all these y ears of grinding serv itude, dead in fact.

Joseph’s sharp response (v erses 1 4 –1 6 ) to this report of the brothers is an

apparent non sequitur in the surface dialogue but faithfully follows the logic of
the subsurface exchange on the nature of their fraternal connection. Why , after
all, should the adm ission of the ten that they hav e two m ore brothers, one at
hom e and one gone, be seized as proof—“That’s just what I told y ou!”—that they
are spies? One m ay guess that the brothers’ v eiled statem ent about Joseph’s fate
trips a trigger of anger in him , rem inding him of their treachery and thus
driv ing him to repeat the accusation of espionage. He then dem ands that
Benjam in be brought to him , not only because he m ay be eager to see his full
brother but also because, with the m em ory of the ten brothers’ act of betray al
upperm ost in his m ind, he can hardly trust these sons of Leah and the
concubines; he m ay well wonder what they m ight hav e done to the other of
Rachel’s two sons. The “test” Joseph proposes has only a specious logic in the
interrogation of spies: he im plies that if one part of their statem ent about their
fam ily condition can be shown to be false, then there is no truth in them and
they m ust be spies. (This obv iously could not work as a test of spies because the
conv erse would not hold: they m ight be telling the truth about their brother at
hom e and y et be in Egy pt to gather intelligence for unspecified Canaanite
powers.) But the test has a profound logical function in the oblique interrogation
of brothers: if in fact they hav e left Benjam in unharm ed all these y ears, the
truth of their words will be confirm ed, that, despite past div isiv eness, “twelv e
brothers y our serv ants are, we are the sons of one m an.”

The narrator, as we hav e noted, began the episode by em phatically and

sy m m etrically stating Joseph’s knowledge and the brothers’ ignorance. Now,
through all this dialogue, he studiously refrains from com m ent, allowing the
dy nam ics of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers to be rev ealed

2 01
solely through their words, and leav ing us to wonder in particular about
Joseph’s precise m otiv es. Whatev er those m ay be, the alertness to analogy to
which biblical narrativ e should hav e accustom ed us ought to m ake us see that
Joseph perpetrates on the brothers first a rev ersal, then a repetition, of what
they did to him . They once cast him into a pit where he lay uncertain of his
fate; now he throws all ten of them into the guardhouse, where he lets them
stew for three day s; then, as they did before, he isolates one brother—“one” of
y ou brothers like the “one” who is said to be no m ore—and depriv es him of his
freedom for a period that m ight prov e indefinite. (When Jacob learns of
Sim eon’s absence, he is quick to m ake this equation: “Me y ou hav e bereav ed. /
Joseph is no m ore and Sim eon is no m ore” [Gen. 4 2 :3 6 ].) We as readers
knowingly perceiv e this analogy between Joseph’s past plight and the present
one of the brothers. They , on their part, express at least an intuitiv e
understanding of that connection, for they see the workings of a principle of
retaliation in which “distress” is inflicted for “distress.” What this m eans is that
in their dialogue with each other (v erses 2 1 –2 2 ), the subm erged interrogation
on brotherhood present in their interv iew with Joseph breaks through to the
surface: arrested as spies, they are im pelled to confess to each other their guilt
in hav ing done away with their brother. It is a fine stroke of delay ed exposition
that only now are we inform ed that when Joseph was seized by his brothers, he
pleaded with them and they turned a deaf ear. Genesis 3 7 , which reports the
actual ev ent of the kidnapping, is entirely silent on Joseph’s words and feelings
at that terrible m om ent; now the brothers’ guilt is com pounded by this new
rev elation of an im ploring Joseph surrounded by im passiv e brothers.

But do the brothers im agine they are guilty of m urder or kidnapping?

Conv entional biblical scholarship m isses the point by flatly describing the
entire narrativ e as a som ewhat confused splicing of two disparate v ersions of the
Joseph story , E and J: in E, Reuben is Joseph’s adv ocate and concludes he is dead
after the Midianites (hav ing found the boy in the pit quite by chance) take him
away ; in J, Judah sav es Joseph’s life by proposing to sell him into slav ery , the
slav e traders here being identified as Ishm aelites. Though not all the details of
the two v ersions hav e been harm onized as m odern conv entions of consistency
would require, it seem s to m e clear that both are needed for a v ariety of reasons,
the m ost urgent one at the present juncture being a desire to intim ate som e

2 02
m oral equiv alence between kidnapping and m urder. In both v ersions, the
brothers as a group first intended to kill Joseph. When Reuben discov ers Joseph
has v anished from the pit from which he had planned secretly to rescue the boy ,
the well-m eaning firstborn is persuaded that his brother is dead. This ov erlap of
the supposedly fatal disappearance of Joseph with the deliberate selling of
Joseph suggests that selling him into slav ery is a v irtual m urder and thus
underm ines Judah’s claim that by selling the boy the brothers will av oid the
horror of blood-guilt. Now, as the brothers finally face their culpability two
decades after the crim inal fact, it is the v oice of Reuben that is heard, accusing
them of fratricide, and no one tries to deny the accusation because for all they
know that m ay be, at least in effect, the crim e they hav e com m itted by selling
him as a slav e.

At precisely this point (v erses 2 3 –2 4 ) the narrator, who has absented him self
ev er since the first half of v erse 9 , except to conv ey tersely the inform ation that
Joseph placed his brothers under arrest (v erse 1 7 ), steps forward to report
som ething about Joseph that changes the whole em otional configuration we
hav e been observ ing. First, there is another piece of delay ed exposition
cunningly withheld for the perfect m om ent. Up till now, we hav e not been
encouraged to puzzle about the language in which Joseph and his brothers
com m unicated. Perhaps we m ight ev en hav e supposed that this Egy ptian
political wizard would naturally exhibit a fluency in Canaanite dialects, only
taking care regularly to swear by Pharaoh as a token of his thoroughly
Egy ptian identity . In any case, the m ention of an interpreter at the beginning
of his first dialogue with the brothers would hav e blunted the sense of
im m ediate confrontation that, as we hav e seen, is so essential psy chologically
and them atically in the progress of that scene. Now, when we are told that all
along they hav e been speaking with a sim ultaneous translator as interm ediary ,
we are brought up short. Suddenly we realize that there is an added, technical
dim ension to the opposition between Joseph’s knowledge and the brothers’
ignorance: throughout this m eeting, unknown to them , he has “understood”
them or “listened to” them , and at this point he has just heard them twice
confess their own past failure to listen to or understand him . “And he turned
away from them and wept and returned to them and spoke to them , and he took
Sim eon from them and placed him in fetters before their ey es.” Until this

2 03
m om ent, we m ight hav e assum ed a perfect continuity between Joseph’s harsh
speech and his feelings. Perhaps, we m ay faintly wonder, these tears are tears of
self-pity or anger, and we are to assum e that the harshness persists. But it seem s
far m ore likely that as Joseph hears his brothers’ expression of rem orse, the first
strong im pulse of reconciliation takes place in his own feelings, though he
cannot y et trust them and so m ust go on with the test. Through the knowing
ey es of the om niscient narrator, we see him weeping in priv ate, then resum ing
his stern Egy ptian m ask as he returns to address the brothers and to take his
hostage from them .

Joseph’s weeping, m oreov er, at the end of this first encounter between the
brothers initiates a beautifully regulated crescendo pattern in the story . Twice
m ore he will weep. The second tim e (Gen. 4 3 :3 0–3 1 ), when he first sets ey es on
his brother Benjam in, is in its sty listic form ulation an elaborate expansion of
the first report of weeping: “And Joseph hurried out, for his feelings for his
brother ov erwhelm ed him and he wanted to weep, and he went into the
cham ber and wept there. And he bathed his face and cam e out and held him self
in check.” Unlike the account in Chapter 4 2 , the m otiv e for the weeping here is
clearly stated, and the specification of m inute actions—wanting to weep, going
into another room , weeping, washing his face, com posing him self—is far bey ond
the Bible’s laconic norm , thus focusing the ev ent and producing an effect of
dram atic retardation in the narrativ e tem po. Manifestly , we are m ov ing
toward a clim ax, and it occurs in the third act of Joseph’s weeping (Gen. 4 5:1 –
2 ), as at last he m akes him self known to his brothers. Here, we are told that “he
could no longer hold him self in check,” and the prev iously hidden weeping is
now done in the presence of his brothers, turning into a trem endous sobbing
that ev en the Egy ptians standing outside can hear. The rising pattern, then, of
three repetitions, begun with the eav esdropping Joseph of Gen. 4 2 :2 4 , is not
only a form al sy m m etry through which the writer giv es shape and order to his
tale, but also the tracing of an em otional process in the hero, from the m om ent
when twenty -two y ears of anger begin to dissolv e to the one when he can bring
him self to say “I am Joseph y our brother.”

After Joseph’s weeping and the im prisonm ent of Sim eon in Genesis 4 2 , the
story m ov es on to the restoration of the brothers’ silv er and then their first
discov ery of it (Gen. 4 2 :2 5–2 8), which, as we saw in the prev ious chapter,

2 04
stresses a sense of strange destiny and once m ore opposes the ignorance of the
brothers to Joseph’s knowledge. Im m ediately after this opening of the bags at
the encam pm ent, the brothers are placed back in Canaan in the presence of
their father, and just as we would expect of the Bible’s conv ention of v erbatim
repetition, they report what has befallen them in Egy pt by an alm ost exact
restatem ent of extensiv e phrasal elem ents from their earlier dialogue with
Joseph. Understandably , this recapitulation (Gen. 4 2 :2 9 –3 4 ) of the prev ious
scene in Egy pt abbrev iates it, but apart from the deletions, which speed up the
narrativ e tem po in a way appropriate for the report of what has already been
told, sm all, subtle changes in the phrasing and word order of the original
dialogue nicely reflect the fact that the brothers are now addressing their
father. Joseph here is twice referred to as “the m an who is lord of the land,” in
still another unwitting confirm ation, this tim e shared by father and sons, of the
dream that the sun and m oon and elev en stars would bow down to him . In the
brothers’ v ersion for Jacob’s benefit, first they affirm to Joseph the fact of their
honesty and that they would nev er be spies, then that they are the twelv e sons
of one m an, whereas in actually speaking to Joseph they first announced that
they were all the sons of one m an, as though som ehow that were a necessary
pream ble to their declaration of honesty . “Twelv e brothers we are,” they restate
for Jacob their earlier speech to Joseph, “the sons of our father. One is no m ore
and the y oungest is now with our father in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 4 2 :3 2 ).
Naturally enough, in speaking to Jacob they refer to him as “our father” and
not as “one m an in the land of Canaan.” They also rev erse the order of the
inform ation they gav e to Joseph, placing the brother who is no m ore first and
the brother who is at hom e second. Perhaps they m ean to suggest to their father
that they div ulged this precious fact of Benjam in’s existence only grudgingly ,
at the end of their speech to the Egy ptian ov erlord. In any case, “one is no m ore”
is the clim actic statem ent for Joseph, while “the y oungest is now with our
father” is the crucial rev elation for Jacob, and so in each case what touches
m ost deeply the person addressed is reserv ed for the last. When Joseph told the
brothers of his intention to take a hostage, he said that one of them would be
“detained” (the Hebrew word, yeʾaser, could also m ean, quite plainly , “be
fettered”) in prison; in repeating Joseph’s words to Jacob, the brothers
diplom atically soften this to “One of y our brothers leav e with m e.” (This apt
substitution of a tactful euphem ism for the concrete im age of incarceration

2 05
beautifully dem onstrates how the m inor v ariations in the Bible’s v erbatim
repetition are part of a deliberate pattern, not a m atter of casual sy nony m ity .)
Finally , Joseph had concluded the term s of the test by say ing that Benjam in
would hav e to be brought to him if the brothers were to escape death; the
brothers, in their report to Jacob, are careful to edit out this threatening talk of
death and to m ake the v izier’s speech end on a positiv e note, present only by
im plication in the actual words he used to them : “I shall know y ou are not spies
but are honest. I shall giv e back y our brother, and y ou can trade in the land”
(Gen. 4 2 :3 4 ).

This attem pt to giv e a faithful but also tactful account of what happened in
Egy pt is im m ediately followed by the second discov ery of the silv er in the
saddle-packs, the one that em phasizes the brothers’ fear and, by im plication,
their sense of guilt. As we observ ed in chapter 7 , Jacob responds to this m om ent
and to the entire report that has preceded it by accusing his sons of hav ing
bereav ed him and by exhibiting his own suffering in form al rhetorical
em phasis. At this point, his firstborn steps forth:
3 7 . And Reuben spoke to his father, say ing, “My two sons y ou m ay put to
death if I do not bring him back to y ou. Place him in m y hands and I will
return him to y ou.” 3 8. And he said, “My son shall not go down with y ou,
for his brother is dead, and he alone rem ains, and should harm befall him
on the way y ou are going, y ou would bring down m y gray head in sorrow
to Sheol.”

This dialogue—the narrator once m ore effaces him self and refrains from all
“editorial” com m ent—prov ides a wonderful definition of the clash of different
obtusities that so often constitutes fam ily life and that has already had
catastrophic consequences in this founding fam ily of Israel. Reuben, the m an of
im pulse who once v iolated his father’s concubine and who also m ade a
blundering attem pt to sav e Joseph from the other brothers, inv ites Jacob to kill
his own two sons if any thing should happen to Benjam in. His father has just
bem oaned being twice bereav ed, and now Reuben com pounds m atters by
proposing that Jacob do away with two of his grandsons if Benjam in should be
lost! (There seem s to be a deliberate m atching of two liv es for two here, for in

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Gen. 4 6 :9 we learn that Reuben actually had four sons.) Again one understands
why Reuben the firstborn will be passed ov er, and why the line of kings will
spring from Judah, Joseph’s second adv ocate, who in the next chapter (Gen.
4 3 :8–9 ) will m ake a m ore reasonable statem ent of readiness to stand bond for
Benjam in.

Jacob does not ev en honor Reuben’s rash if well-m eaning offer with a reply ,
but instead pronounces his determ ination not to allow Benjam in to go to Egy pt.
Before, he had said euphem istically and a little am biguously that Joseph was
gone; now he flatly states that Joseph is dead. Astonishingly , he rem ains as
obliv ious to the feelings of his ten sons as he was during Joseph’s childhood. “He
alone rem ains,” he tells them to their faces, om itting the necessary phrase
“from his m other,” as though only the sons of Rachel, and not they , were his
sons. Twenty -two y ears before, he had announced that he would go down to the
underworld m ourning his son. Now he concludes this episode by once m ore
env isaging the descent of his gray head to the underworld in inconsolable
sorrow. Jacob is ev er the rhetorician of grief, fond of v erbal sy m m etries in his
plaints, and so his speech begins with the words loʾ yered, “he shall not go
down,” and concludes with the “bringing down” (vehoradtem) of his old m an’s
head to the underworld, thus form ing a neat env elope structure. There m ay be
an ironic play between Sheol, the underworld, and Egy pt, that alien land to the
south fam ous for its m onum ental cult of the dead. Benjam in, of course, will duly
go down to Egy pt, and as things turn out, Jacob will be brought down by his
sons not to the underworld but to Egy pt, where Joseph is aliv e and resplendent
in his v iceregal power.

Hav ing closely followed through Genesis 4 2 the m inute dev elopm ent of this
them atic opposition between knowledge and ignorance—an ignorance on the
part of Jacob and his sons not only of Joseph’s actual fate but also of the
underly ing m oral configuration of their fam ily —we m ay now hurry on to the
dénouem ent, with just a few brief com m ents on the passages that lead up to it
(Gen. 4 3 :1 –4 4 :1 7 ). Before long Jacob is forced to abandon his resolution
concerning Benjam in by the brute force of circum stances: the persistence and
worsening of the fam ine. At first he asks his sons in a rather gingerly phrase to
“go back, buy us som e [alternately , “a bit of”] food” (Gen. 4 3 :2 ), as though it
were a m atter of a trip to a nearby m arket. Judah, now em phatically assum ing

2 07
the role of spokesm an, m akes it inexorably clear that the prov isions can be
obtained only if Benjam in com es along. “For the m an said to us,” he quotes
Joseph, “‘You shall not see m y face unless y our brother is with y ou’” (Gen.
4 3 :5). In point of fact, these particular words do not appear in the dialogue
between Joseph and his brothers, but of course Judah is try ing to driv e hom e
the idea to his reluctant father that the m an who holds the key s to the
lifesustaining grain will rem ain totally inaccessible without Benjam in. Judah
attributes one other utterance to Joseph that did not figure in the actual
dialogue in Egy pt: the question, “Is y our father still aliv e?” The way the Bible
uses v erbatim repetition with additions m akes it at least possible to im agine
that Joseph really asked such a question but that it sim ply was not included in
the reported dialogue, so it is not absolutely necessary to construe it as an
inv ention of Judah’s. In any case, the m ain reason for introducing that question
here is proleptic, pointing forward to Joseph’s anxious inquiry (Gen. 4 3 :2 7 ) of
the brothers as to whether their father is still aliv e, and to his m ore urgent
question, “Is m y father still aliv e?” (Gen. 4 5:3 ) once he rev eals him self—that is,
now that y ou know I am Joseph, y ou can tell m e the real truth about our father.
(These two added bits of dialogue could be explained through a discrepancy
between sources, J here and E abov e, but ev en if that is the case, the redacted
text m akes the two v ersions interact dy nam ically .) Jacob bem oans his sons’
im prudence in hav ing ev en m entioned Benjam in’s existence to the Egy ptian,
but Judah, with perfect them atic appropriateness, points out that they were
caught in a web of consequences of which before the fact they were quite
ignorant: “Could we know he would say , ‘Bring down y our brother’?” (Gen.
4 3 :7 ). And so Jacob consents, grim ly , reluctantly , to let Benjam in go, his last
words to his sons striking a note of paternal griev ance in perfect keeping with
his prev ious speeches: “And as for m e, if I m ust be bereav ed, I will be bereav ed”
(Gen. 4 3 :1 4 ).

Before this, howev er, he has instructed the brothers to take with them to
Egy pt double the silv er that was placed in their bags as well as balm , honey ,
gum , ladanum , pistachio nuts, and alm onds (Gen. 4 3 :1 1 –1 2 ). By giv ing these
orders, he unwittingly carries forward the pattern of restitution that m arks the
entire conclusion of the story . Pieces of silv er passed from the hands of the
Ishm aelite traders to the brothers in exchange for Joseph, who was carried down

2 08
to Egy pt. Then Joseph sent silv er hidden in the bags back northward to Canaan.
Now Jacob orders double the silv er to be sent back to Egy pt. (The silv er m otif, as
we shall soon see, will be giv en one m ore clim actic twist.) The ironic connection
with the Ishm aelite traders is ingeniously reinforced by the other half of Jacob’s
instructions: that carav an long ago was seen (Gen. 3 7 :2 5) “bearing gum and
balm and ladanum on their way to take down to Egy pt,” and now the brothers
will constitute another such carav an, bearing exactly the sam e goods together
with a few extra item s, not bringing Joseph as a slav e but headed, unawares, to
the discov ery of his identity as suprem e m aster.

In the characteristic rapidity with which biblical narrativ e elides unessential

transitions, the brothers are then im m ediately placed in Joseph’s presence
(“and they rose and went down to Egy pt and stood in Joseph’s presence” [Gen.
4 3 :1 5]). As soon as they arriv e, they are brought in haste by Joseph’s officials to
the v iceregal palace, which m akes them fear they are about to be accused of
hav ing stolen the silv er they had found in their bags. On the threshold of the
palace, they proclaim their innocence in this regard to Joseph’s m ajordom o. He
assures them that nothing is am iss and that their God and the God of their
father m ust hav e restored the m oney to them . (In this way an association is
once m ore confirm ed between Joseph’s m achinations and the workings of
prov idence.) Joseph at last sees Benjam in, “his brother, his m other’s son” (Gen.
4 3 :2 9 ), and, as we hav e already observ ed, he is ov erwhelm ed with em otion,
going out to another room to weep. At the feast to which he inv ites the brothers,
he sits them in the exact order of their birth, from eldest to y oungest, which
dum bfounds the brothers: the contrast between his knowledge and their
ignorance is thus acted out in a kind of ritual perform ance.

The brothers then are sent off on the road to Canaan, Joseph once again
instructing his m ajordom o to hide the silv er they hav e paid in their bags, but
this tim e adding that his silv er div ining goblet is to be slipped into Benjam in’s
bag (Gen. 4 4 :2 ). The m ajordom o, in accordance with Joseph’s orders, then
chases after the brothers and, quickly ov ertaking them , angrily accuses them of
hav ing stolen the precious goblet. They , of course, are aghast at this new
charge, and feel sure enough of their innocence to tell him that if any one of
them is found with the goblet, that person should be put to death. This grim
detail inv okes a parallel to a m uch earlier m om ent in their father’s story when,

2 09
pursued by a wrathful Laban in part because som eone had stolen Laban’s
household gods, Jacob confidently inv ited his father-in-law to search his tent
and pronounced that if any one were found to hav e taken the household gods,
that person should not liv e (Gen. 3 1 :3 2 ). On that occasion, the stolen cult
objects were not discov ered, but the thief, Jacob’s belov ed wife Rachel, seem s to
hav e suffered the consequence of his sentence when she died giv ing birth to
Benjam in. Now, the shadow of a sim ilar doom is m ade to pass ov er that v ery son
before the com ic resolution of the plot. (The m ajordom o, it should be observ ed,
im m ediately softens these fatal term s: “he with whom it is found shall becom e a
slav e to m e, and y ou shall be clear” [Gen. 4 4 :1 0].) The choice of a silv er
div ining goblet for this false accusation of Benjam in is an ingenious fusion of the
m otif of silv er—illicitly receiv ed, surreptitiously restored, and ultim ately linked
with the brothers’ guilt toward Joseph—with the central them e of knowledge,
for it is an instrum ent supposedly used by Joseph to foretell the future, as he has
done m ore prom inently with dream s. “What is this deed y ou hav e done?” he
asks the brothers when they are brought back under arrest to the palace (Gen.
4 4 :1 5), and the general term s in which he couches his accusation touch all the
way back to their crim inal act against him two decades past. “Did y ou not
know”—and of course there was all too m uch they did not know—“that a m an
like m e would surely div ine [or, would certainly m anage to div ine it]?”

We are now at the final clim actic turning of this extraordinary story . Judah
com es forward to speak for all the brothers (Gen. 4 4 :1 6 ): “What shall we say to
m y lord? What shall we speak and how shall we prov e ourselv es right? God has
found out y our serv ants’ crim e. Here we are, slav es to m y lord, both we and the
one in whose hand the goblet was found.” This is the final confirm ation by the
brothers them selv es of Joseph’s dream t-of suprem acy , their necessary
subserv ience. It is also an open adm ission of guilt that at least psy chologically
m ust refer to the real crim e, the selling of Joseph for silv er, and not to the
im puted crim e of stealing the silv er goblet. Judah m ay understandably feel
that he and his brothers cannot prov e their innocence in regard to the stolen
goblet, but he could not seriously believ e it is an act they hav e knowingly
com m itted, and the crim e that God Him self has at last found out is certainly the
m aking away with Joseph. Judah’s proposal that all elev en brothers becom e
slav es is rejected by Joseph as unjust: the thief alone should be confined. Judah,

21 0
confronted with the prospect of inadv ertently losing Benjam in after they hav e
caused Joseph to be lost, steps closer to Joseph and pronounces his great
im passioned plea.
1 8. Please, m y lord, let y our serv ant speak a word in m y lord’s hearing,
and let y our wrath not flare against y our serv ant, for y ou are like
Pharaoh. 1 9 . My lord had asked his serv ants, say ing, “Do y ou hav e a
father or brother?” 2 0. And we said to m y lord, “We hav e an aged father
and a y oung child of his old age, and his brother being dead, he alone is
left of his m other, and his father lov es him .” 2 1 . And y ou said to y our
serv ants, “Bring him down to m e, that I m ay set m y ey es on him .” 2 2 .
And we said to m y lord, “The lad cannot leav e his father. Should he leav e
him , his father would die.” 2 3 . And y ou said to y our serv ants, “If y our
y oungest brother does not com e down with y ou, y ou shall not see m y face
again.” 2 4 . And it happened when we went up to y our serv ant, m y
father, that we told him the words of m y lord. 2 5. And our father said,
“Go back, buy us som e food.” 2 6 . And we said, “We cannot go down. If our
y oungest brother is with us, we shall go down. For we cannot see the
m an’s face if our y oungest brother is not with us.” 2 7 . And y our serv ant,
our father, said to us, “You know that two did m y wife bear m e. 2 8. And
one went out from m e and I thought, O, he’s been torn to shreds, and I
hav e not seen him since. 2 9 . And should y ou take this one, too, from m e
and harm befall him , y ou will bring down m y gray head in ev il to Sheol.”
3 0. And so, should I com e to y our serv ant, m y father, and the lad be not
with us, for his life is bound to the lad’s, 3 1 . when he saw the lad was not
with us, he would die, and y our serv ants would bring down the gray head
of y our serv ant, our father, in sorrow to Sheol. 3 2 . For y our serv ant
becam e pledge for the lad to m y father, say ing, “If I do not bring him to
y ou, I shall bear the blam e to m y father for all tim e.” 3 3 . And so, let y our
serv ant, pray , stay instead of the lad as a slav e to m y lord, and let the lad
go up with his brothers. 3 4 . For how shall I go up to m y father if the lad be
not with us? Let m e not see the ev il that would find out m y father.

In the light of all that we hav e seen about the story of Joseph and his brothers,
it should be clear that this rem arkable speech is a pointfor-point undoing,

21 1
m orally and psy chologically , of the brothers’ earlier v iolation of fraternal and
filial bonds. A basic biblical perception about both hum an relations and
relations between God and m an is that lov e is unpredictable, arbitrary , at tim es
perhaps seem ingly unjust, and Judah now com es to an acceptance of that fact
with all its consequences. His father, he states clearly to Joseph, has singled out
Benjam in for a special lov e, as he singled out Rachel’s other son before. It is a
painful reality of fav oritism with which Judah, in contrast to the earlier
jealousy ov er Joseph, is here reconciled, out of filial duty and m ore, out of filial
lov e. His entire speech is m otiv ated by the deepest em pathy for his father, by a
real understanding of what it m eans for the old m an’s v ery life to be bound up
with that of the lad. He can ev en bring him self to quote sy m pathetically (v erse
2 7 ) Jacob’s ty pically extrav agant statem ent that his wife bore him two sons—as
though Leah and the concubines were not also his wiv es and the other ten were
not also his sons. Twenty -two y ears earlier, Judah engineered the selling of
Joseph into slav ery ; now he is prepared to offer him self as a slav e so that the
other son of Rachel can be set free. Twenty -two y ears earlier, he stood with his
brothers and silently watched when the bloodied tunic they had brought to
Jacob sent their father into a fit of anguish; now he is willing to do any thing in
order not to hav e to see his father suffer that way again.

Judah, then, as spokesm an for the brothers, has adm irably com pleted the
painful process of learning to which Joseph and circum stances hav e m ade him
subm it; the only essential thing he still does not know is Joseph’s identity . These
rev elations of a profound change in feeling shake Joseph. He can no longer go on
with the cruel m asquerade through which he has been testing his brothers, and
so at last he bursts into tears openly in their presence, then say s to them , “I am
Joseph. Is m y father still aliv e?” (Gen. 4 5:3 ). Understandably , they are struck
dum b with fear and astonishm ent, and so he has to ask them to step closer to
him (Gen. 4 5:4 ) as he repeats his rev elation. (The obtuseness of conv entional
source criticism is nowhere better illustrated than in its attributing to a
duplication of sources this brilliantly effectiv e repetition so obv iously justified
by the dram atic and psy chological situation.) “I am Joseph y our brother,” he
announces, now adding the relational term , “whom y ou sold into Egy pt.” It is
the last hov ering m om ent, perhaps unintended by Joseph, of om inous
am biguity in his address to them , for those words about their hav ing sold him ,

21 2
com ing from the all-powerful ruler of Egy pt, m ight well strike terror in the
hearts of the brothers. Joseph seem s to perceiv e this, for he continues (Gen.
4 5:5): “And now, do not be pained and do not be incensed with y ourselv es that
y ou sold m e down here, because for sustenance God has sent m e before y ou.” He
then rev eals to his brothers the full extent of his knowledge, telling them of the
fiv e y ears of fam ine still to com e, and repeatedly stressing that it is God who has
singled him out for greatness as the instrum ent of His prov idential design to
preserv e the seed of Israel. Joseph sends his brothers back to Canaan laden with
the bounty of Egy pt, instructing them to return with Jacob and all their
households; and finally , after Jacob is v ouchsafed a night-v ision from God that
he should not fear the descent into Egy pt, father and son are at last reunited.

All this, of course, m akes a v ery com pelling story , one of the best stories, as
m any readers hav e attested, that has ev er been told. But it also unforgettably
illustrates how the pleasurable play of fiction in the Bible brings us into an
inner zone of com plex knowledge about hum an nature, div ine intentions, and
the strong but som etim es confusing threads that bind the two. The consum m ate
artistry of the story inv olv es an elaborate and inv entiv e use of m ost of the
m ajor techniques of biblical narrativ e that we hav e considered in the course of
this study : the deploy m ent of them atic key words; the reiteration of m otifs; the
subtle definition of character, relations, and m otiv es m ainly through dialogue;
the exploitation, especially in dialogue, of v erbatim repetition with m inute but
significant changes introduced; the narrator’s discrim inating shifts from
strategic and suggestiv e withholding of com m ent to the occasional flaunting of
an om niscient ov erv iew; the use at points of a m ontage of sources to catch the
m ultifaceted nature of the fictional subject.

All these form al m eans hav e an ultim ately representational purpose. What is
it like, the biblical writers seek to know through their art, to be a hum an being
with a div ided consciousness—interm ittently lov ing y our brother but hating
him ev en m ore; resentful or perhaps contem ptuous of y our father but also
capable of the deepest filial regard; stum bling between disastrous ignorance and
im perfect knowledge; fiercely asserting y our own independence but caught in a
tissue of ev ents div inely contriv ed; outwardly a definite character and
inwardly an unstable v ortex of greed, am bition, jealousy , lust, piety , courage,
com passion, and m uch m ore? Fiction fundam entally serv es the biblical writers

21 3
as an instrum ent of fine insight into these abiding perplexities of m an’s
creaturely condition. That m ay help explain why these ancient Hebrew stories
still seem so intensely aliv e today , and why it is worth the effort of learning to
read them attentiv ely as artful stories. It was no easy thing to m ake sense of
hum an reality in the radically new light of the m onotheistic rev olution. The
fictional im agination, m arshalling a broad array of com plicating and
integrating narrativ e m eans, prov ided a precious m edium for m aking this sort
of difficult sense. By using fiction in this fashion, the biblical writers hav e
bequeathed to our cultural tradition an enduring resource in the Hebrew Bible,
and we shall be able to possess their v ision m ore fully by better understanding
the distinctiv e conditions of art through which it works.

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 9

Conclusion

TO WHAT USE can a conscientious reader put the v arious proposals that hav e
been m ade in these chapters about the artful workings of biblical narrativ e? Let
m e say that in fram ing m y argum ent I hav e been guided by an assum ption no
longer altogether fashionable, and that to som e m ay ev en seem quixotic—
nam ely , that criticism can prov ide usable tools, that principles uncov ered in
the scrutiny of a selection of representativ e texts m ay be profitably followed
through a broad spectrum of other texts. For the m om ent, at any rate, it would
seem that literary studies at large hav e branched off into two div ergent
directions, one inv olv ing the elaboration of form al sy stem s of poetics that hav e
only a hy pothetical relation to any indiv idual literary work, the other
dedicated to perform ing on the giv en text v irtuoso exercises of interpretation
that are in principle inim itable and unrepeatable, aim ed as they are at
underm ining the v ery notion that the text m ight hav e any stable m eanings.
Throughout this study , I hav e tried to follow a third path, not really between
these two alternativ es but rather headed in another, m ore practical direction,
one that I believ e is warranted by the nature of literary texts in general and of
the Bible in particular.

On the one hand, I hav e not attem pted to prov ide a com prehensiv e sy stem of
descriptiv e poetics to explain biblical narrativ e because it seem s to m e that the
actual operations of these tales are too m anifold and too untidy to be contained
in any sy m m etrical fram e of form al taxonom ies, neatly labeled categories,
tables and charts, without distortion. On the other hand, although m y
exposition has proceeded through the analy sis of exam ples, I hav e tried to av oid
interposing m y explications between the reader and the text because I consider
it a betray al of trust to leav e the reader with critical discourse in place of a text.
Obv iously , m y own readings of specific biblical passages assum e a certain
interpretation, and it will not alway s be one with which ev ery reader can
agree, but I hav e tried throughout to focus on the com plexly integrated way s in
which the tale is told, giv ing special attention to what is distinctiv e in the artful
procedures of biblical narrativ e, what requires us to learn new m odes of

21 5
attentiv eness as readers. Such attentiv eness, I think, is im portant not only for
those curious about m atters of narrativ e technique, whether ancient or
m odern, but also for any one who wants to com e to term s with the significance of
the Bible. I do not presum e to judge whether a literary text m ay ev er be
thought to hav e an absolute, fixed m eaning (though that is surely unlikely ),
but I certainly reject the contem porary agnosticism about all literary m eaning,
and it seem s to m e that we shall com e m uch closer to the range of intended
m eanings—theological, psy chological, m oral, or whatev er—of the biblical tale
by understanding precisely how it is told.

In the effort to explain the inv entiv eness, the subtlety , the lum inous depths of
v arious biblical stories, perhaps m y com m ents m ay hav e seem ed at tim es to be
som ething of a critical “perform ance” in their own right, but I should hope that
it is a kind of perform ance that could be repeated, am plified, refined by other
readers with other texts, for I hav e constantly sought to uncov er through m y
analy sis the principles on which the m ultifaceted artistry of the biblical
narrativ es operates. In order to underscore the wider applicability of the
approach I hav e put forth, let m e briefly sum m arize the chief distinctiv e
principles of biblical narrativ e that hav e been considered in this study .
Reading, of course, is far too com plex an activ ity to be reduced to checklists, but
it m ay be helpful to keep certain features in m ind, to ask ourselv es certain
questions, in order to direct the appropriate close attention on these highly
laconic, finely articulated tales. Let m e propose that for the purposes of sy nopsis
we group what we hav e been discussing under four general rubrics: words,
actions, dialogue, and narration. Here, then, are the kinds of things one m ight
usefully look for in reading a biblical narrativ e:

1 . Words. While the v erbal m edium of any literary narrativ e can nev er be
entirely transparent or indifferent, the choice or the m ere presence of
particular single words and phrases in the biblical tale has special weight
precisely because biblical narrativ e is so laconic, especially com pared to the
kinds of fiction that hav e shaped our com m on reading habits. The repetition of
single words or brief phrases often exhibits a frequency , a saliency , and a
them atic significance quite unlike what we m ay be accustom ed to from other
narrativ e traditions. The one m ost prom inent dev ice inv olv ing the repetition of
single words is the use of the Leitwort, the them atic key word, as a way of

21 6
enunciating and dev eloping the m oral, historical, psy chological, or theological
m eanings of the story . What befalls the protagonist of the biblical tale is
em phatically punctuated by significance, and the Leitwort is a principal m eans
of punctuation. Where the narration so abundantly encourages us to expect this
sort of repetition, on occasion the av oidance of repetition, whether through
substitution of a sy nony m or of a wholly div ergent word or phrase for the
anticipated recurrence, m ay also be particularly rev ealing. Repeated words
m ay be relativ ely abstract, like “blessing” in Genesis, and so point toward a
them atic idea, or they m ay be entirely concrete, like “stones” in the Jacob
story , and so serv e to carry forward narrativ e m otifs that do not hav e one clear
them atic significance.

When the tale, m oreov er, is told so tersely , the fact of inclusion or exclusion of
any particular lexical item m ay itself be quite im portant. There is not a great
deal of narrativ e specification in the Bible, and so when a particular descriptiv e
detail is m entioned—Esau’s ruddiness and hairiness, Rachel’s beauty , King
Eglon’s obesity —we should be alert for consequences, im m ediate or ev entual,
either in plot or them e. Sim ilarly , when a relational epithet is attached to a
character, or, conv ersely , when a relational identity is stated without the
character’s proper nam e, the narrator is generally telling us som ething
substantiv e without recourse to explicit com m entary : Michal oscillates between
being the daughter of Saul and the wife of Dav id according to her fortunes in the
story , and Tam ar, m ost painfully , is identified as the sister of Am non when he
rapes her.

2 . Actions. Recurrence, parallels, analogy are the hallm arks of reported action
in the biblical tale. The use of narrativ e analogy , where one part of the story
prov ides a com m entary on or a foil to another, should be fam iliar enough from
later literature, as any one who has ev er followed the workings of a
Shakespearian double plot m ay attest. In the Bible, howev er, such analogies
often play an especially critical role because the writers tend to av oid m ore
explicit m odes of conv ey ing ev aluation of particular characters and acts. Thus,
t h e only com m entary m ade on Jacob’s getting the firstborn’s blessing from his
blind father through deception occurs sev eral chapters later in an analogy with
a rev ersal—when he is deceiv ed in the dark and giv en Leah instead of Rachel,
then chided that it is not the custom of the land to m arry the y ounger sister

21 7
before the firstborn.

One kind of recurrence in biblical narrativ e appears regularly through a long

series of ev ents, like the deflection of prim ogeniture in Genesis, the backslidings
of Israel in the Wilderness tales, the periodic interv ention of div inely inspired
liberators in Judges; and such recurrence works in a way akin to the Leitwort,
establishing a kind of rhy thm of them atic significance, clearly suggesting that
ev ents in history occur according to an ordained pattern. If pattern is decisiv e
in the biblical stress on repeated actions, concatenation is equally im portant.
There is in the biblical v iew a causal chain that firm ly connects one ev ent to the
next, link by link, and that, too, accounts for a good deal of recurrence in the
narrativ e shaping of the ev ents; for analogy reinforces this sense of causal
connection. One could say that ev ery thing that befalls Jacob flows from the
fatal m om ent when he buy s the birthright from Esau for a serv ing of lentil
pottage. That ev ent, of course, was itself prefigured in the intrauterine struggle
between the twins, and it is followed, both causally and analogically , by the
theft of the blessing, Jacob’s flight, his v arious confrontations with the two riv al
sisters who are his wiv es, his contentions with his wily father-in-law, his
wrestling with the m y sterious stranger, and ev en his troubles with his sons,
who deceiv e him with a garm ent, Joseph’s tunic, just as he, m asquerading as
Esau, deceiv ed his own father with a garm ent.

The two m ost distinctiv ely biblical uses of repeated action are when we are
giv en two v ersions of the sam e ev ent and when the sam e ev ent, with m inor
v ariations, occurs at different junctures of the narrativ e, usually inv olv ing
different characters or sets of characters. As a rule, when we can detect two
v ersions of a single ev ent, it is safe to assum e that the writer has effected a
m ontage of sources (what scholarship calls a “doublet”), and the question we
m ight ask is why he should hav e done this, in what way s do the two narrativ e
perspectiv es com plem ent or com plicate each other. (A technique som ething like
collage seem s to hav e been intrinsic to literary com position in the Bible and not
m erely a consequence of redaction.) The recurrence of the sam e ev ent—the
sam eness being definable as a fixed sequence of narrativ e m otifs that, howev er,
m ay be presented in a v ariety of way s and som etim es with ingenious v ariations
—is what I hav e called “ty pe-scene,” and it constitutes a central organizing

21 8
conv ention of biblical narrativ e. Here one has to watch for the m inute and often
rev elatory changes that a giv en ty pe-scene undergoes as it passes from one
character to another. How, for exam ple, we m ight ask ourselv es as readers, does
the barren Rebekah’s annunciation ty pe-scene differ from Sarah’s, from
Hannah’s, from the wife of Manoah’s, from the Shunam ite wom an’s?
Occasionally , a ty pe-scene will be deploy ed in conjunction with a pointed use of
narrativ e analogy by setting two occurrences of the sam e ty pe-scene in close
sequence. Thus, the life-threatening trial in the wilderness first happens to
Abraham ’s older son, Ishm ael (Genesis 2 1 ), then to his y ounger son, Isaac,
whom Abraham seem s com m anded to slaughter (Genesis 2 2 ). The alert reader
can learn a great deal about the com plex m eanings of the two stories by
study ing the network of connections, both in recurring phrases and narrativ e
m otifs, that links them —one a tale of a desperate m other driv en out into the
wilderness with her son, the other a tale of an anguished father silently obey ing
the injunction to take his son into the wilderness, in both instances an angel’s
v oice calling out from heav en at the critical m om ent to announce that the boy
will be sav ed. Ev en the buffer passage between the two stories (Gen. 2 1 :2 2 –3 4 ),
the tale of a dispute ov er a well in the desert, reinforces this network of
connections, for it inv olv es obtaining a source of life in the wilderness (as
explicitly happens in the Ishm ael story ) and it concludes with Abraham ’s
m aking a cov enant m eant to guarantee peace and well-being for his progeny .

3 . Dialogue. Ev ery thing in the world of biblical narrativ e ultim ately

grav itates toward dialogue—perhaps, as I hav e had occasion to suggest, because
to the ancient Hebrew writers speech seem ed the essential hum an faculty : by
exercising the capacity of speech m an dem onstrated, howev er im perfectly , that
he was m ade in the im age of God. This “grav itation” often m eans that phrases
or whole sentences first stated by the narrator do not rev eal their full
significance until they are repeated, whether faithfully or with distortions, in
direct speech by one or m ore of the characters. It also m eans that,
quantitativ ely , a rem arkably large part of the narrativ e burden is carried by
dialogue, the transactions between characters ty pically unfolding through the
words they exchange, with only the m ost m inim al interv ention of the narrator.
As a rule, when a narrativ e ev ent in the Bible seem s im portant, the writer will
render it m ainly through dialogue, so the transitions from narration to dialogue

21 9
prov ide in them selv es som e im plicit m easure of what is deem ed essential, what
is conceiv ed to be ancillary or secondary to the m ain action. Thus, Dav id’s
com m itting adultery with Bathsheba is reported v ery rapidly through
narration with brief elem ents of dialogue, while his elaborate schem e first to
shift the appearance of paternity to Uriah, and when that fails, to m urder
Uriah, is rendered at m uch greater length largely through dialogue. One m ay
infer that the writer m eans to direct our attention to the m urder rather than to
the sexual transgression as the essential crim e.

If, then, the v ery occurrence of extended dialogue should signal the need for
special attentiv eness as we read, there is a set of m ore specific questions we
m ight ask ourselv es about the way the dialogue em erges and dev elops. Is this
the first reported speech for either or both of the two interlocutors? If so, why did
the writer choose this particular narrativ e juncture to m ake the character
rev eal him self or herself through speech? How does the kind of speech assigned
to the character—its sy ntax, tone, im agery , brev ity or lengthiness—serv e to
delineate the character and his or her relation to the other party to the
dialogue? In looking for answers to this last question, it will be especially helpful
to keep in m ind the tendency of the biblical writers to organize dialogue along
contrastiv e principles—short v ersus long, sim ple v ersus elaborate, balanced
v ersus asy m m etrical, perceptiv e v ersus obtuse, and so forth. Finally , we should
be alert to the seem ing discontinuities of biblical dialogue and ponder what they
m ight im ply . When do characters ostensibly answer one another without truly
responding to what the other person has said? When does the dialogue break off
sharply , withholding from us the rejoinder we m ight hav e expected from one of
the two speakers?

To the extent that we can reasonably im agine how speakers of Hebrew som e
three thousand y ears ago really m ight hav e addressed one another, biblical
dialogue would seem to exhibit m any fine touches of persuasiv e m im esis, from
Esau’s crudeness and Judah’s desperate eloquence to Hushai’s cunning
rhetorical contriv ance. Virtually ev ery where, howev er, dialogue in the Bible
shows the clearest signs of using m anifestly sty lized speech, and it is alway s
worth try ing to see how the sty lization m akes the dialogue a m ore elegantly
effectiv e v ehicle of m eaning. Perhaps the m ost com m on feature of sty lization in
these spoken interchanges is the fact that the characters often repeat whole

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sentences or ev en series of sentences of each other’s speech alm ost v erbatim : A
will tell B som ething regarding C, and B will then proceed to m arch off to C and
say to him , You know, A instructed m e ... and go on to quote A’s words.
Whenev er we encounter this conv ention—and, of course, there are m any
v ariations on the little schem atic paradigm of it I hav e constructed here—it
behoov es us to watch for the sm all differences that em erge in the general
pattern of v erbatim repetition. To be sure, there are tim es when these
differences m ay be quite inconsequential, as context and com m on sense should
be able to warn us. But frequently enough, the sm all alterations, the rev ersals
of order, the elaborations or deletions undergone by the statem ents as they are
restated and som etim es restated again, will be rev elations of character, m oral,
social, or political stance, and ev en plot. Often, such rev elations will be m atters
of piquant or instructiv e nuance, but som etim es they can be quite m om entous.
In either case, the reliance on this particular technique suggests how m uch the
biblical writers like to lead their readers to inferences through oblique hints
rather than insisting on explicit statem ent.

4 . Narration. Perhaps the m ost distinctiv e feature of the role play ed by the
narrator in the biblical tales is the way in which om niscience and
unobtrusiv eness are com bined. The sweep of the biblical narrator’s
authoritativ e knowledge extends from the v ery beginnings of things, which he
can report down to the precise language and order of the div ine utterances that
brought the world into being, to the characters’ hidden thoughts and feelings,
which he m ay sum m arize for us or render in detail as interior speech. He is all-
knowing and also perfectly reliable: at tim es he m ay choose to m ake us wonder
but he nev er m isleads us. I would suppose that as readers of later fiction m ost of
us tend to associate this sort of em phatic om niscience with narrators like those
of Fielding, Balzac, Thackeray , George Eliot, who flaunt their knowledge by
stepping out in front of the proscenium arch to chat with or lecture to the
audience, m aking us acutely aware that they are m ediating between us and the
fictional ev ents. In the Bible, on the other hand, the narrator’s work is alm ost
a ll récit, straight narration of actions and speech, and only exceptionally and
v ery briefly discours, disquisition on and around the narrated facts and their
im plications. The assurance of com prehensiv e knowledge is thus im plicit in the
narrativ es, but it is shared with the reader only interm ittently and at that

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quite partially . In this way , the v ery m ode of narration conv ey s a double sense
of a total coherent knowledge av ailable to God (and by im plication, to His
surrogate, the anony m ous authoritativ e narrator) and the necessary
incom pleteness of hum an knowledge, for which m uch about character, m otiv e,
and m oral status will rem ain shrouded in am biguity .

The practical aspect of all this to be kept in m ind as one reads is that the
reticence of the biblical narrator, his general refusal to com m ent on or explain
what he reports, is purposefully selectiv e. Why , we should ask ourselv es, is a
m otiv e or feeling attributed to one character and not to another? Why is one
character’s attitude toward another stated flatly in one instance, both stated
and explained in a second instance, and entirely withheld from us in a third?
The Bible’s highly laconic m ode of narration m ay often giv e the im pression of
presenting the ev ents v irtually without m ediation: so m uch, after all, is
conv ey ed through dialogue, with only the m inim al “he said” to rem ind us of a
narrator’s presence; and ev en outside of dialogue, what is often reported is
absolutely essential action, without obtrusiv e elaboration or any obv ious
interv ention by the narrator. Against this norm , we should direct special
attention to those m om ents when the illusion of unm ediated action is
m anifestly shattered. Why at a particular juncture does the narrator break the
tim e fram e of his story to insert a piece of expository inform ation in the
pluperfect tense, or to jum p forward to the tim e of his contem porary audience
and explain that in those day s it was the custom in Israel to perform such and
such a practice? Why does he pause to m ake a sum m arizing statem ent about
the condition of a character, as, for exam ple, in the observ ation about Joseph’s
already established v iceregal status just as the ten brothers arriv e in Egy pt?
Why at certain points is the regular rapid tem po of narration slowed down to
take in details of a kind for which in general no tim e is allowed?

These v arious relaxations of reticence are, I suspect, the operation of biblical

narrativ e m ost resistant to a m anageable rule of thum b, but an alertness to
their occurrence and a willingness to wonder about their m otiv ation, with the
specific contexts as a guide, will help m ake us better readers of the biblical tales.

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In try ing to define as I hav e what one should learn to look for in biblical
narrativ e, I do not m ean to suggest that these ancient Hebrew stories need to be
thought of as “difficult” works, like the fiction of Kafka, Faulkner, and Joy ce,
although I do think they inv olv e com plexities for which sufficient allowance has
often not been m ade. One m ight im agine the Bible as a rich and v ariegated
landscape, perfectly accessible to the observ er’s ey e, but from which we now
stand alm ost three m illennia distant. Through the warp of all those interv ening
centuries, lines becom e blurred, contours are distorted, colors fade; for not only
hav e we lost the precise shadings of im plication of m any of the original Hebrew
words, but we hav e also acquired quite different habits and expectations as
readers, hav e forgotten the v ery conv entions around which the biblical tales
were shaped. Philological research in recent decades has m ade adm irable
progress in recov ering the likely nuances of m any particular words, but that is
only a first step. The reconstruction through careful analy sis of the literary
procedures that gov ern biblical narrativ e can serv e us, at the im m ense rem ov e
from which we v iew these ancient texts, as binoculars to bring m uch that seem s
hazy into focus.

Let m e offer a com pact final exam ple of how this sort of focusing through a
literary perspectiv e can occur. It is a brief m om ent of dialogue, introduced and
concluded by narrativ e report, which m ov es past so quickly that perhaps it
m ight not be thought worthy of special attention, and perhaps its terse
rendering of an em otion-fraught ev ent m ight ev en seem flat and schem atic. By
asking of the text, howev er, m any of the questions we hav e just rev iewed, I
think we shall be able to see how nicely delineated this m om ent is, how densely
suggestiv e its connections with what has preceded it and with what will follow.

In the latter part of Genesis 2 9 , after Jacob finds him self m arried against his
will to Leah and only afterward to the belov ed Rachel, Leah giv es birth to four
sons in rapid succession while Rachel rem ains barren. Of the unlov ed Leah’s
feelings of v exation we learn a good deal through the little nam ing-speeches she
m akes after the birth of each son. Rachel, m eanwhile, is not accorded any
narrativ e attention bey ond the bare report of her barrenness. Finally , at the
beginning of Genesis 3 0, the narrator turns to the y ounger of the two sisters.

1 . And Rachel saw that she had borne no children to Jacob, and Rachel

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 was jealous of her sister, and she said to Jacob, “Giv e m e sons, for if y ou
don’t, I’m a dead wom an!” 2 . And Jacob was incensed with Rachel, and he
said, “Am I instead of God, Who has denied y ou fruit of the wom b?” 3 . And
she said, “Here is m y slav egirl, Bilhah. Com e to bed with her, that she
m ay giv e birth on m y knees, so that I, too, shall be built up through her.”
4 . And she gav e him Bilhah her slav egirl as a wife, and Jacob cam e to bed
with her.

This is the sort of seem ingly straightforward passage that has not inv ited
m uch com m entary from m odern scholars, except for a few explanatory notes on
the practice of giv ing birth on som eone’s knees as an ancient rite of adoption,
and an elucidation of a pun that is quite obv ious in the Hebrew, “I shall be built
up” (ʾibbaneh), which play s on banim, sons, and so also has the sense of “I shall
be sonned.” The dialogue itself is stark but at the sam e tim e, in a characteristic
biblical m anner, subtle, as I think we shall be able to see by attending to its
specific term s and to how it fits into the larger context of the story .

The narrator begins by reporting Rachel’s perception—surely not just a flat

observ ation of fact but a bitter conclusion after y ears of waiting—of her
barrenness. Until this point, we hav e been told absolutely nothing of Rachel’s
feelings as Jacob her kinsm an first em braced her and wept ov er her at the well,
as her father set her aside to m ake Leah Jacob’s first wife, as she receiv ed Jacob’s
lov e but her sister brought forth his children. Now, to m otiv ate not only the
action at hand but also the whole subsequent story of the two sisters and their
offspring, the narrator at last giv es us access to Rachel’s feelings and tells us
that she was jealous of her sister. One m ight note that Leah is not m entioned by
nam e here (v erse 1 ): what is brought to the fore is the prim ary fact of her
identity as sister, and hence the sm oldering riv alry for progeny and lov e
between these two daughters of Laban. That riv alry in turn is linked through
analogy with the whole series of struggles between y ounger and elder brothers
in Genesis, and the repeated driv e of the secondborn to displace the firstborn, as
Jacob him self had contriv ed to displace Esau. Thus, Rachel’s jealous rage is both
a unique ev ent and som ething that partakes of the déjà v u, the tension between
those two contradictory aspects generating m uch of its depth of m eaning.

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 After the notation of jealousy , Rachel speaks, and we should keep in m ind that
it is the v ery first piece of dialogue giv en to her in the narrativ e. As such, we
m ight expect that it will be especially rev elatory of character, and in fact it
im m ediately shows us a Rachel who is im patient, im pulsiv e, explosiv e: “Giv e
m e sons, for if y ou don’t, I’m a dead wom an!” The brusqueness of this is ev en a
little m ore em phatic in the Hebrew, where “giv e,” havah, is a word often used
for perem ptory and crudely m aterial requests (Judah begins with the sam e
word when he tells Tam ar, who is disguised as a prostitute, that he wants her
body ), and where the participial form used for “dead,” meitah, has an urgent
tem poral im m ediacy (“I’m dead,” “I’m a dead wom an”). With an alertness to
echoes, we m ight observ e that this is the second tim e Jacob has been confronted
by som eone who claim ed to be on the point of death unless im m ediately giv en
what he or she wanted, the first instance occurring in the request for lentil
pottage by his rav enous brother Esau. The barren Rachel asks for not just a son
but sons (the second one she will bear is to cost her life itself). Jacob in his
rejoinder say s neither son (ben) nor child (yeled) but instead uses a rather
form al locution, the kenning “fruit of the wom b.” Perhaps he chooses this term
because of the theological context—God’s withholding from her—of his
statem ent; perhaps, also, it sharpens the rebuke to Rachel by stressing her
condition of barrenness through the im plied im age of the childless wom an as a
plant that y ields no fruit.

This alteration of a single term , a procedure that as I hav e tried to show is

often finely significant in the Bible, is part of a larger pattern here—the fam iliar
technique of definition of character through contrastiv e dialogue. The writer’s
easy com m and of that technique is ev ident in his ability to bring it into
effectiv e play ev en in so brief an exchange, where Jacob’s single utterance is (in
the Hebrew) eight words, and Rachel’s two statem ents com e to nineteen words.
Her speech opens with two short, choppy independent clauses (“Giv e m e ... I’m a
dead wom an”), rather hy sterical in tone; and ev en in her second utterance,
which m ov es in a longer sy ntactic chain from intercourse to birth to being built
up, the statem ent is again cast as an im patient im perativ e. Jacob, by contrast,
responds to Rachel’s im portunity with a rhetorical—and of course sarcastic—
question form ulated sy ntactically as a com plex sentence. The opposition
between the two m odes of speech is, roughly , an opposition between expletiv e

225
franticness and angry control.

It is also worth noting the studied av oidances of response in the dialogue.

Rachel does not com m ent directly on Jacob’s rebuke with its suggestion of a
div ine judgm ent of barrenness against her, but instead driv es forward toward
her own practical intention: “Here is m y slav egirl, Bilhah. Com e to bed with
her.” The narrator, who a m om ent earlier m ade a special point of inform ing us
that Rachel’s first speech had prov oked Jacob’s wrath, is now silent on Jacob’s
reaction to this dem and that he take Bilhah as a concubine. The dialogue is
abruptly term inated, giv ing one the im pression that whatev er Jacob thinks of
the arrangem ent, he sees that Rachel is within her legal rights and that
com pliance m ight be the better part of wisdom in dealing with this desperate
wom an. Without any further report of feeling or speech, Bilhah is giv en and
Jacob perform s the required progenitiv e serv ice. The whole dialogue is a m atter
of a few lines, but it succeeds in am ply suggesting the tangle of em otions—lov e,
consideration, jealousy , frustration, resentm ent, rage—that constitutes the
conjugal relationship.

The widest circle of im plication in the scene is defined by its pointed rev ersal
of a ty pe-scene m otif. Rachel, as the fav ored, barren co-wife, is perfectly set up
to be the subject of an annunciation. But instead of pray ing to God in a
sanctuary , like Hannah, or being v isited by God or a div ine em issary , like
Sarah or Manoah’s wife, she accosts her husband and asks him to giv e her sons.
Jacob’s rebuke, then—“Am I instead of God?”—is v irtually an explicit reference
by one of the characters to the traditional requirem ents of the ty pe-scene.
Rachel is of course theologically wrong in im agining that the conferral of
offspring is within the power of husband rather than of God, but at the sam e
tim e we as readers are rem inded, perhaps a little om inously , that as a m atter of
literary plot, this is not the way things are done in all these stories of barren
wiv es. After Rachel finally m anages to conceiv e a child, her life, as I hav e
already noted, will end prem aturely with the birth of her second son; and for all
the glory that her firstborn, Joseph, will one day enjoy , the future kings of
Israel will spring not from him but from Judah, the fourth son of her sister
Leah.

The reading of any literary text requires us to perform all sorts of operations

226
of linkage, both sm all and large, and at the sam e tim e to m ake constant
discrim inations am ong related but different words, statem ents, actions,
characters, relations, and situations. What I hav e tried to indicate throughout
this study and to illustrate by way of sum m ary through this last exam ple is
that in the Bible m any of the clues offered to help us m ake these linkages and
discrim inations depend on a distinctiv e set of narrativ e procedures that for
readers of a later era has to be learned. It has been m y own experience in
m aking a sustained effort to understand biblical narrativ e better that such
learning is pleasurable rather than arduous. As one discov ers how to adjust the
fine focus of those literary binoculars, the biblical tales, forceful enough to begin
with, show a surprising subtlety and inv entiv eness of detail, and in m any
instances a beautifully interwov en wholeness. The hum an figures that m ov e
through this landscape thus seem liv elier, m ore com plicated and v arious, than
one’s preconceptions m ight hav e allowed.

This, I am conv inced, was at the heart of the authors’ intentions: the Hebrew
writers m anifestly took delight in the artful lim ning of these lifelike characters
and actions, and as a result they created an unexhausted source of delight for a
hundred generations of readers. But that pleasure of im aginativ e play is deeply
interfused with a sense of great spiritual urgency . The biblical writers fashion
their personages with a com plicated, som etim es alluring, often fiercely insistent
indiv iduality because it is in the stubbornness of hum an indiv iduality that
each m an and wom an encounters God or ignores Him , responds to or resists
Him . Subsequent religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the
Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the m atter
m ay well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories m ore fully as stories,
we shall also com e to see m ore clearly what they m ean to tell us about God,
m an, and the perilously m om entous realm of history .

227
NOTES

228
 CHAPTER 1

1 Genesis, The Anchor Bible (New York, 1 9 6 4 ), p. 2 9 9 .

2 Though there is scholarly debate on the issue, there is som e indication that in
ancient Near Eastern pagan religion, there were special tem ple prostitutes with
whom m ale worshippers consorted. Their activ ity would not hav e had the base
m ercenary m otiv es that im pelled com m on prostitutes.

3 New York, 1 9 54 , 1 st ed.; updated to 1 9 7 0 through an appended

bibliographical essay by Horace D. Hum m el.

4 Rev . ed., trans. P. R. Ackroy d, New York, 1 9 6 5.

5 New York, 1 9 7 9 .

6 Assen and Am sterdam , 1 9 7 5.

7 (Hebrew) Tel Av iv , 1 9 7 9 .

8 Trans. Willard Trask, Princeton, 1 9 53 .

9 Ha-Sifrut 1 :2 (Sum m er 1 9 6 8), pp. 2 6 3 –2 9 2 .

1 0 Ha-Sifrut 2 :3 (August 1 9 7 0), pp. 6 08–6 6 3 .

1 1 Ha-Sifrut 4 :2 (April 1 9 7 3 ), pp. 1 9 3 –2 3 1 .

1 2 Ha-Sifrut 7 (October 1 9 7 7 ), pp. 1 1 0–1 50.

1 3 “Meanings, Morals, and My steries: Literary Approaches to the Torah,”

Response 9 :2 (Sum m er 1 9 7 5), pp. 6 7 –9 4 .

1 4 The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca, New York, 1 9 7 7 ), pp.
53 –6 5.

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 CHAPTER 2

1 Sacred Discontent (Baton Rouge, La., 1 9 7 7 ), p. 2 1 5.

2 “The ‘Com parativ e Method’ in Biblical Interpretation—Principles and

Problem s,” Göttingen Congress Volume (Leiden, 1 9 7 8), p. 3 54 .

3 Sacred Discontent, p. 2 9 2 .

4 Parataxis, we should recall, m eans placing the m ain elem ents of a statem ent
in a sequence of sim ple parallels, connected by “and,” while hy potaxis arranges
statem ents in subordinate and m ain clauses, specify ing the relations between
them with subordinate conjunctions like “when,” “because,” “although.” Thus,
the sentence “Joseph was brought down to Egy pt and Potiphar bought him ” is
paratactic. The sam e facts would be conv ey ed hy potactically as follows: “When
Joseph was brought down to Egy pt, Potiphar bought him .” (My exam ple is
actually an abbrev iated v ersion of Gen. 3 8:1 . The first v ersion is the way the
original reads, the second v ersion, the way som e m odern translations, av oiding
parataxis, render it.)

5 Translation by Benjam in Foster in Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian

Literature (Bethesda, Md., 2 005), p. 4 6 9 .

6 A recent book by Jacob Licht, Storytelling in the Bible (Jerusalem , 1 9 7 8),

proposes that the “historical aspect” and the “story telling” or “aesthetic” aspect
of biblical narrativ e be thought of as entirely discrete functions that can be
neatly peeled apart for inspection—apparently , like the different-colored strands
of electrical wiring. This facile separation of the inseparable suggests how little
som e Bible scholars hav e thought about the role of literary art in biblical
literature.

7 There is a textual am biguity here in the Hebrew. In subsequent text citations,

am biguities will be indicated by brackets.

8 Yehezkel Kaufm ann, The Book of Judges (Hebrew) (Jerusalem , 1 9 6 8), p. 1 09 .

9 The possible significance of locking and unlocking in the story was brought to
m y attention by George Sav ran.

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1 0 The pun has been observ ed by Luis Alonso-Schökel, who also com m ents on
the play of ʿegel in Eglon’s nam e, “Erzählkunst im Buche der Richter,” Biblica
4 2 (1 9 6 1 ), pp. 1 4 8–1 58.

1 1 Genesis, The Anchor Bible (New York, 1 9 6 4 ), p. 1 9 6 .

1 2 For a detailed discussion of this central aspect of biblical narrativ e, see

chapter 6 .

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 CHAPTER 3

1 Years after I wrote this passage, I discov ered there was a John Way ne western,
Rio Bravo, that uses precisely this v ariation of the conv ention.

2 Philadelphia, 1 9 7 6 .

3 For bibliographical adv ice on Hom eric ty pe-scenes, I am indebted to m y friend

and colleague Thom as G. Rosenm ey er.

4 We shall consider the dev ice of v erbatim repetition at length in chapter 5.

5 J. P. Fokkelm an in his rem arkable book, Narrative Art in Genesis (Assen and
Am sterdam , 1 9 7 5), has m ade the acute observ ation that the presentativ e
hinneh (the fam iliar “behold” of the King Jam es Version) is often used to m ark a
shift in narrativ e point of v iew from third-person om niscience to the character’s
direct perception (see pp. 50–51 ).

6 New York, 1 9 6 1 , p. 2 05.

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 CHAPTER 4

1 Shim on Bar-Efrat has nicely observ ed how v ariations of this form ula
constitute a distinct conv ention for narrativ e endings. See his The Art of the
Biblical Story (Hebrew) (Tel Av iv , 1 9 7 9 ), pp. 1 4 2 –1 4 3 .

2 The artfulness of Hushai’s speech has been illum inated in an adm irable
analy sis by Shim on Bar-Efrat, in The Art of the Biblical Story, pp. 3 2 –4 3 .

3 More elaborate instances of such uses of div ergent repetition will be considered
in chapter 5.

4 The distinction between free m otifs and bound m otifs—that is, details that
cannot be deleted without essentially altering the plot—was first proposed by
Boris Tom ashev sky , “Them atics,” Russian Formalist Criticism, ed. L. T. Lem on
and M. J. Reis (Lincoln, Neb., 1 9 6 5), pp. 6 6 –9 5.

5 Figures I I I (Paris, 1 9 7 2 ), p. 1 4 6 .

6 My understanding of the finely regulated exposition in this chapter owes

m uch to an astute sem inar paper on the Hannah story by m y student Chana
Kronfeld. She also considers in detail the function of ty pe-scene here, though
with a different em phasis from the one I shall propose.

7 Letter to Louise Colet, October 1 2 , 1 853 .

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 CHAPTER 5

1 The possibility of artistic purpose ev en in such duplications will be considered

in chapter 7 .

2 Telling I t Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film (Ithaca, N.Y., 1 9 7 2 ).

3 Werker, v ol. 2 , Schriften zur Bibel (Munich, 1 9 6 4 ), p. 1 1 3 1 (m y translation).

In Hebrew, Darko shel miqra (Jerusalem , 1 9 6 4 ), p. 2 84 .

4 For a discussion of this aspect of 1 Sam uel 1 6 , see chapter 7 , pp. 1 4 9 –1 50.

5 Text and Texture (New York, 1 9 7 9 ), pp. 4 0–6 2 .

6 There is, alas, a welter of confusion in the way these two term s hav e been used
by different literary theorists and critics. In the m eanings I propose, I think I am
stay ing reasonably close to ordinary language usage by insisting that m otif is
concrete while them e im plies v alue and therefore som e operation of abstraction.
Because of the understandable association between m otif and Leitmotiv, it seem s
to m e sensible to link m otif with purposeful recurrence and not use it, as som e
theorists hav e, to designate any isolable elem ent in a story .

7 It is characteristic of conv entional Bible scholarship that an excellent

historicalphilological com m entary on Kings, that of John Gray (Philadelphia,
1 9 6 3 ), should note the frequent repetitions here, cite as a parallel the Ras
Sham ra m y ths, and then say nothing m ore than, “Such repetition is of course a
feature of popular narrativ e and is found in ballad literature.”

8 Hoffm an, “Between Conv entionality and Strategy : On Repetition in Biblical

Narrativ e” (Hebrew), Ha-Sifrut 2 8 (April 1 9 7 9 ), pp. 89 –9 9 . Sternberg’s article
is “The Structure of Repetition in Biblical Narrativ e” (Hebrew), Ha-Sifrut 7
(October 1 9 7 7 ), pp. 1 1 0–1 50. I m ight add that Sternberg and I dev eloped
sim ilar understandings of the biblical conv ention of repetition quite
independently , an early v ersion of the present chapter hav ing been published
as an article in 1 9 7 6 . We both ev en arriv ed separately at closely parallel
readings of the use of m inutely v aried repetition in Genesis 3 9 , a conv ergence of
perceptions that suggests that we are in fact contem plating the sam e literary
object.

234
9 I am grateful to Meir Sternberg for the perception, in his article on the
structure of repetition, of this sm all but crucial shift from “m an” to “slav e.” On
the sam e v erse, he m akes an observ ation sim ilar to m ine on the shrewd
exploitation of sy ntactic am biguity . “The Structure of Repetition in Biblical
Narrativ e,” p. 1 4 2 .

235
 CHAPTER 6

1 Scholarly opinion still tends to assum e, on rather tenuous sty listic and form -
critical grounds, that there is a separate “succession narrativ e” that begins in 2
Sam uel 9 , but the ev idence for a unified im aginativ e conception of the whole
Dav id story seem s to m e persuasiv e.

2 A sim ilar observ ation on the lack of fixed epithets and its connection with a
dy nam ic conception of character has been m ade by Shim on Bar-Efrat in The Art
of the Biblical Story (Hebrew) (Jerusalem , 1 9 7 9 ), pp. 1 1 0–1 1 1 .

236
 CHAPTER 7

1 In what follows, m y awareness of the textual problem s of this chapter has been
considerably sharpened through discussions with m y colleague Jacob Milgrom ,
and through a fine essay by m y student Nitza Ben-Dov .

2 I am indebted to Nitza Ben-Dov for her perception of these Leitwörter.

3 The Film Sense, trans. and ed. Jay Ley da (London, 1 9 4 3 ), p. 1 7 .

4 “The Difficulty of Ruling Well: King Dav id of Israel,” Semeia 8 (1 9 7 7 ), pp. 1 5–

33.

5 The bracketed phrase reflects the reading of the Septuagint.

237
GENERAL INDEX

238
Abigail

Abim elech, king of Gerar

Abinadab

Abiram

Abner

Abraham

Absalom

Achilles

Action

Adam and Ev e, story of

Adonijah

Aeneid, The (Virgil)

Ahab

Ahaziah, King

Ahim elech

Ahinoam

Ahitophel

Allegory , political

Allusion

Alonso-Schökel, Luis

Am biguity

239
Am non

Analogy

Analy sis (literary )

Annunciation ty pe-scene

Antony m s

Arend, Walter

Art and I llusion (Gom brich)

Art of the Biblical Story, The (Bar-Efrat)

Asahel

Auerbach, Erich

240
Balaam

Balak

Balzac, Honoré de

Bar-Efrat, Shim on

Bathsheba

Be-Midbar Rabbah (Midrash)

Benjam in

Bereishit Rabbah (Midrash)

Betrothal ty pe-scene

in Book of Ruth

in Sam son story

by v iolence

Bias of sty lization

Bible

as historicized prose

literary analy sis of

as sacred history

Biblical narrativ e

oral context of, as explanation for repetition

oral origins of

Biblical poetry . See also Poetry

241
Biblical prosody

Bilhah

Boaz

Boccaccio

Books of the Bible

Buber, Martin

242
Cassuto, Um berto

Castle, The (Kafka)

Causation

Cerv antes

Characterization

Characters

differentiation through contrast

direct speech by

intersection of, through their own words

presentation of

and spoken language

Closure, defined

Com m entary

Com prehensiv eness of God’s design

Connections

causal

between fiction and knowledge

networks of

Conrad, Joseph

Contradictions

Contrast, character differentiation through

243
Contrastiv e dialogue

Conv entions

of dialogue

exceptions to

reiteration of key words

v ariation of v erbatim repetition

v erbatim repetition

Creation stories

Culley , Robert C.

244
Dante

Dathan

Dav id

and Abner

and Absalom

and Ahim elech

ancestry of

and Bathsheba

and betrothal ty pe-scene

changes in

claim to the allegiance of Saul’s subjects

cy cle of stories about

death of son

em otions of

and Goliath

grief of

as historicized fiction

introduction of

and Joab

line of

and Michal

245
 phy sical appearance of

reunion with Michal

and Saul

settlem ent of Jerusalem

Deborah

Dénouem ent

Design

com prehensiv eness of God’s

and disorder

Dialogue

av oidances of response

contrastiv e

conv ention of

interruption of

inv ented

between Joseph and his brothers

lack of, between Dav id and Michal

narration through

one-sided

prim acy of

246
 between Reuben and Jacob

and sty lization

Dickens, Charles

Diderot, Denis

Dinah

Disorder and design

Divine Comedy (Dante)

Div ine interv ention

Div ine plan. See also Design

Doeg

Double m eaning

Double plots

Doublets

Dram atic force

Dunciad (Pope)

Duplication

247
Eglon, King of Moab

Ehud, son of Gera

Eisenstein, Sergei

Eissfeldt, Otto

Eli

Eliab

Elijah

Eliot, George

Elkanah

Elohistic Docum ent

Endogam y

Enkidu

Enuma Elish (poem )

Er

Esau

Esther

Etiology

Ety m ology

Euphem ism

Ev e. See also Adam and Ev e, story of

Ev ent

248
Excav ativ e scholarship

Exposition

Expository inform ation

249
Faulkner, William

Faux raccord

Fiction

by ancient Hebrew writers

birth of

fictional characters

fictional im agination

fictionalized history

and history

history related to

and knowledge

Fielding, Henry

Fishbane, Michael

Flaubert, Gustav e

Fokkelm an, J. P.

Folklore

Adam and Ev e as

as cause of repetition in the Bible

Folktales

Ford, Ford Madox

Foreknowledge

2 50
Foreshadowing

Form criticism

Freedm an, Dav id Noel

2 51
Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais)

Gattung (concept)

Genesis

Genette, Gérard

Gibeah

Goliath

Gom brich, E. H.

Gros Louis, Kenneth R. R.

Gunkel, Herm ann

2 52
Ha-Sifrut (journal)

Hagar

Hahn, Herbert F.

Hannah

annunciation of

pray er of

Harshav , Benjam in

Hesiod

Historiography

History

and fiction

historical fiction

historical narrativ es

historical tradition

historicized fiction

Hoffm an, Yair

Hom er

“Horatian Ode Upon Crom well’s Return from Ireland, An,”

Hrushov ski, Benjam in

Hushai

Hy potaxis. See Sy ntax

2 53
2 54
Ibn Ezra, Abraham

Idiom

I liad (Hom er)

Im agery

Indeterm inacy

Inference

Interior m onologue

Interpolation

Irony

Isaac

betrothal of Rebekah

binding of

preference for Esau

Ish-Bosheth

Ishm ael

Ishm aelites

Israel

2 55
Jacob

death of

dialogue with Reuben

as fictional character

finding of bride at well

grief of

in m ourning ov er Joseph’s death

in m ourning ov er the selling of Joseph

and Rachel

Rebekah’s lov e for

sale of birthright

sons’ report upon return from Egy pt

stories of

Jakobson, Rom an

Jam es, Henry

Jealousy (Robbe-Grillet)

Jerem iah

Jesse

Jezebel

Joab

Job

2 56
Jonah

Jonathan

Joseph

and Benjam in

and brothers

and brothers, in Egy pt

dialogue with brothers

dream s

dream s of grandeur

in Egy pt

as fictional character

Jacob’s grief ov er

and Potiphar’s wife

in prison in Egy pt

as regent of Egy pt

reunited with Jacob

sold into slav ery by brothers

weeping

word m otifs in story of Joseph

Joseph’s brothers

2 57
 dialogue with Joseph

encounter with Joseph in Egy pt

Joy ce, Jam es

Judah

Judges

2 58
Kafka, Franz

Kawin, Bruce F.

Key words

King Lear (Shakespeare)

“King through Ironic Ey es, The,”

Kings

Knowledge

fiction and

in story of Joseph and his brothers

Korah

2 59
Laban

Language

Lattim ore, Richm ond

Leah

Legend

Leitmotiv

Leitwort

Leitwortstil

Lev i

Lev ites

Literalism

Literary analy sis

Literary conv ention. See Conv entions

Literary creation

Literary im agination

260
Manoah’s wife

Marduk

Marv ell, Andrew

Meaning

com plications of

indeterm inacy of

Mediation

Metaphor

Metony m y

Michal

Midianites

Midrash

Mim esis

Mimesis (Auerbach)

Moabites

Monologue, interior

Monotheism

Montages

Mordecai

Moses

Motifs

261
 in annuncitaion ty pe-scenes

betrothal

conv entional

Dav id

Joseph

phrase-m otifs

predeterm ined

Rachel

recurrent

Sam son

shared

silv er

stones as

and them e

and ty pe-scenes

v erbal

word-m otifs

My th

262
Nabal

Naboth

Naom i

Narration

through dialogue

subsidiary role of

third-person

Narrativ e

analogy

com posite

narrativ e ev ents

oral

point of v iew

sum m ary

written

Narrative Art in Genesis (Fokkelm an)

Narrativ e exposition

Nathan

New Criticism

263
Obadiah

Odyssey

Old Testament, The: An I ntroduction (Eissfeldt)

Old Testament in Modern Research, The (Hahn)

Om niscience

Onan

Oracles, inquiry of as dialogue

Oral context of biblical narrativ e, and explanation for repetition

Oral narrativ e

264
Paganism

Pale Fire (Nabokov )

Palti

Paradise Lost (Milton)

Parallelism

Parataxis. See Sy ntax

Pattern

Peninnah

Pentateuch

Perception, m ode of

Perry , Menakhem

Philistines

Phy sical detail

Plato

Play

Poetry

poetic justice

poetic parallelism

poetic sy m m etries of statem ent

Point of v iew

Political allegory

265
Pope, Alexander

Potiphar’s wife

Pray er

Presentation, m ode of

Pretem poral exposition

Pretem poral v erse

Priam

Priestly Docum ent

Prim itiv e narrativ e

Prim ogeniture

Prose

flexibility of

prose fiction

prose narration

prose sy ntax

repetition in

of the Yahwistic Docum ent (J)

Prosody , Biblical

Prov erbs

Pun

266
Rachel

Rashi

Rebekah

annunciation ty pe-scene

betrothal to Isaac

lov e for Jacob

Recurrence. See also Repetition

Red and the Black, The (Stendhal)

Rehoboam

Repetition

in biblical poetry

cultic-historical function of

div ergence from v erbatim

increm ental

and oral context of biblical narrativ e

phrasal

reiterativ e

v ariation in

v erbatim

See also Recurrence

Representation

267
Response (journal)

Restatem ent

Reuben

Reuel

Rhetoric

Robbe-Grillet, Alain

Rosenberg, Joel

Rosenzweig, Franz

Russian Form alists

Ruth

268
Sacred Discontent (Schneidau)

Sam son

Sam uel

birth of

lim itation of knowledge

and Saul

Sarah

Satire

Saul

and Dav id

dialogue with Abner

dialogue with Dav id

as historicized fiction

introduction to Dav id

m urderous intentions toward Dav id

and Sam uel

Schneidau, Herbert

Semeia (journal)

Shakespeare, William

Sham m ah

Shim ei

269
Silv er m otif

Sim eon

Sodom

Solom on

Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner)

Sources

com bination of

contradictions between

duplication of

Speech

direct

indirect

interior

thought reported as

Speiser, E. A.

Spoken language

Stein, Gertrude

Stendhal

Sternberg, Meir

Stones m otif

27 0
Structuralism

Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Narrative (Culley )

Sty le

Sty lization

Substratum , obtruding the

Sum m ary

Sy m m etry

Symposium, The (Plato)

Sy nony m s

Sy ntax

hy potaxis

parataxis

27 1
Talm on, Shem ary ahu

Tam ar

Telling I t Again and Again (Kawin)

Text and Texture (Fishbane)

Thackeray , William Makepeace

Them atic assertion

Them atic dev elopm ent

Them atic exposition

Them e

in Jacob story

in Joseph story

of knowledge

and Leitwort

recurrent

in The Turn of the Screw (Jam es)

and ty pe-scenes

Third-person narration

Thought reported as speech

Thucy dides

Tiam at

Tim nah

27 2
Todorov , Tzv etan

Tolstoy

Tone

Torah

Transfiguration

Transm ission

Tristram Shandy (Sterne)

Turn of the Screw, The (Jam es)

Typischen Szenen bei Homer, Die

Ty pe-scenes

annunciation

betrothal

initial elem ents of

m atriarchal

suppression of

27 3
Ugarit

Ulysses (Joy ce)

Understatem ent

Unobtrusiv esness

Uriah

27 4
Verbs

27 5
Water

Werkinterpretation (school of literary criticism )

Wom an as subsidiary to m an

Woolf, Virginia

Word-m otif

Words

Written narrativ e

27 6
Yahwistic Docum ent

27 7
Zipporah

27 8
 BIBLICAL REFERENCE INDEX

Battles of Yahweh

Book of Yashar

27 9
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel

Chronicles of the Kings of Judea

2 80
Deuteronom y

2 81
Esther

Exodus

2 :1 50–2 1

7 :1 7 –1 8

7 :2 0–2 1

2 82
Genesis

1 :1

1 :2 7

2 :1 –3

2 :2 –3

2 :4

2 :4 b

2 :4 b–4 7

2 :1 0–1 4

2 :1 8

2 :1 9 –2 0

1 2 :1

1 2 :1 0–2 0

16

20

2 0:5–6

2 0:9 –1 0

2 1 :9 –2 1

2 1 :2 2 –3 4

2 83
22

24

2 4 :1 0–6 1

2 4 :1 5

2 4 :1 6

2 4 :1 8–2 0

2 4 :3 0–3 1

25

2 5:2 8

2 5:3 0–3 3

2 6 :1 –1 2

2 7 :1 4 –1 7

2 7 :1 8

2 7 :2 2

29

2 9 :1 –2 0

2 9 :9

2 9 :2 0

2 9 :2 6

30

2 84
31

3 1 :3 2

34

3 4 :3 1

37

3 7 :2 5

3 7 :2 6 –2 7

3 7 :2 9

3 7 :3 2

3 7 :3 3

3 7 :3 4 –3 5

3 7 :3 6

38

3 8:1 1

39

40

41

42

4 2 :2 4

4 2 :2 5

4 2 :2 5–2 8

2 85
4 2 :2 7 –2 8

4 2 :2 9 –3 4

4 2 :3 2

4 2 :3 4

4 2 :3 5–3 6

4 2 :3 6

4 3 :1 –4 4 :1 7

4 3 :2

4 3 :5

4 3 :7

4 3 :8–9

4 3 :1 1 –1 2

4 3 :1 4

4 3 :1 5

4 3 :2 1

4 3 :2 7

4 3 :2 9

4 3 :3 0–3 1

4 4 :2

4 4 :1 0

2 86
4 4 :1 5

4 4 :1 6

4 5:1 –2

4 5:3

4 5:4

4 5:5

4 6 :9

2 87
Jerem iah

1 7 :9

2 2 :1 0

Job

1 –2

1 :7

2 7 :2 1

Joshua

1 0:1 3

Judges

3 :3 0

13

14

1 4 –1 6

19

2 88
Kings

1 Kings

1 :1 3

1 :2 4

1 :3 0

12

1 2 :1 0–1 1

1 2 :1 4

18

1 8:9 –1 4

1 8:1 5

2 1 :1 3 –1 5

2 Kings

2 89
Num bers

16

1 6 :1 –2

1 6 :3 –1 1

1 7 :1 2 –83

2 2 :2

2 2 :2 –2 4 :2 5

2 2 :6

2 2 :1 2

2 2 :2 8

2 2 :2 9

2 2 :3 1

2 2 –2 4

2 3 :7 –8

2 3 :9

2 4 :3 –4

2 4 :1 7

2 6 :1 0

290
Ruth

291
1 Sam uel

9 :1 1 –1 2

10

15

16

1 6 :1

1 6 :1 3

1 6 :1 4

1 6 :1 7

1 6 :1 8

1 6 :2 1

1 6 :2 3

1 6 –1 7

17

1 7 :4 –7

1 7 :2 3

1 7 :4 2

1 7 :4 5–4 6

18

19

292
 1 9 :1 1

1 9 :1 2

1 9 :1 7

21

2 1 :2

2 1 :3

2 1 :1 1

2 2 :1 0

24

2 4 :5–6

2 4 :1 5

2 4 :1 7

25

2 5:4 2

2 5:4 3

2 7 :1

30

3 0:4 –6

2 Sam uel

1 :1 8–1 9

293
2 :1

2 :1 9 –2 1

3 :1 1

3 :1 4

3 :1 5–1 6

6 :1 6

1 0:1 3

11

12

13

1 3 :1 1

1 3 :1 5

1 3 :2 1 –2 2

17

1 7 :1

19

1 9 :1

1 9 :5

294
295
 Copy right © 2 01 1 by Robert Alter

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Alter, Robert.
The art of biblical narrativ e / Robert Alter.
p. cm .
Includes index.

eISBN : 9 7 8-0-4 6 5-02 555-8

1 . Bible. O.T.—Language, Sty le. 2 . Narration in the Bible. I. Title.

BS1 1 7 1 .3 .A4 5 2 01 1
2 2 1 .6 ’6 —dc2 2
2 01 0051 2 6 8

296
297