Overview

This is the first book to systematically investigate the texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a character expresses a wish to die. Contrary to previous scholarship on these texts that assumed these death wishes were simply a desire to escape suffering, Hanne Løland Levinson employs narrative criticism and conversation analysis, together with diachronic methods, to carefully hear each death-wish text in its literary context. She demonstrates that death wishes embody powerful, multi-faceted rhetorical strategies. Grouping the death-wish texts into four main rhetorical strategies of negotiation, expression of despair and anger, longing to undo one's existence, and wishing for a different reality, Løland Levinson portrays the complex reasons why characters in the Hebrew Bible wish for death. She concludes that the death wishes navigate the tension between longing for death and fighting for survival - a tension that many live with also today as they attempt to claim agency and autonomy in life.

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9781108986540

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Reviews

'A very welcome addition to biblical studies, Hanne Løland Levinson's The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible addresses a well-known motif that has never been given full and proper study. This fresh and insightful study avoids the pitfall of taking death wishes at face value and instead recognizes their rhetorical functions: death wish as a negotiation strategy; death wishes expressed in despair or anger; wishing away one's birth; and death wishes as wishful thinking. The book is very well constructed and executed; the writing is lovely. It also contributes to the contemporary social conversation about the end of life, especially in noting how the expression of a death wish may not communicate a simple wish for one's death, but a desire for help or an expression of deep pain or traumatic loss. Thoughtful; and most highly recommended.' Mark S. Smith, Princeton Theological Seminary 'The book is a highly readable discussion of a fascinating topic, and full of precise and nuanced insights into the texts.' Marian Kelsey, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 'Levinson has clearly demonstrated the rhetorical goals of utterances about death, and this remains an important contribution … an important and worthwhile study.' David G. Firth, Society of Biblical Literature '… an important and worthwhile study.' David G. Firth, Review of Biblical Literature

Author Information

Hanne Løland Levinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her first book Silent or Salient Gender? (2008) received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise. Her research interests include gender, metaphor, narrative analysis, and death in the Hebrew Bible. She co-founded the Society of Biblical Literature program unit on Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible.

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