The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible: Rhetorical Strategies for Survival by Hanne Løland Levinson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible: Rhetorical Strategies for Survival by Hanne Løland Levinson Amy Kalmanofsky Hanne Løland Levinson. The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible: Rhetorical Strategies for Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 275 pp. Most of us have used some version of “kill me now” to apply rhetorical punch to an expression of dislike or frustration. We intentionally employ hyperbolic speech to make clear our distaste and objections. When we hear others use such expressions, especially those for whom we are responsible, we must assess how seriously we should take these statements. Similarly, when we encounter biblical characters who express death wishes, we should consider how literally to interpret them. Despite its morbid topic, Hanne Løland Levinson offers a fascinating, accessible, and even enjoyable analysis of biblical death-wish texts. In The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible: Rhetorical Strategies for Survival, Løland Levinson examines the rhetorical intent of biblical texts within which characters express their desire to die or to be dead, a difference Løland Levinson explicates in her study. By placing these death-wish texts in conversation with each other, Løland Levinson discovers a variety of reasons characters express the desire to die or to be dead. Death wishes can reflect a character’s genuine desire to die. They can also express a character’s pain and are used as a negotiation tactic for altering their life’s circumstances. In the introductory first chapter, Løland Levinson presents the criteria for identifying death-wish texts and her methodology for analyzing them. Formulated in direct speech, generally addressed to someone in the second person, whether human or divine, death wishes frequently appear as conditional statements that can be direct appeals to die or be killed, or as indirect statements that question a character’s life’s worth. The dialogical element of death-wish texts is critical to Løland Levinson, who employs conversation analysis, the systematic analysis of talk in everyday interactions, in her case studies of these texts. Chapter 2 considers the death wish as a negotiation strategy in which the weaker party in the negotiation ups the stakes of the negotiation by uttering a death wish. Rachel in Genesis 30 and Moses in Numbers 11 provide Løland Levinson with convincing examples of characters who bargain with their lives. Rachel wants sons and Moses wants help managing the rebellious Israelites. In Løland Levinson’s reading, both characters express existential distress, but they do so to alter their circumstances. Their strategy works. Rachel has a son and Moses gets help with the appointment of the seventy elders. Chapter 3 examines death wishes that communicate anger and despair. The prophets Elijah and Jonah do not negotiate with their lives, as Moses and Rachel do. Instead, these prophets express a genuine desire to die. According to Løland Levinson, Elijah wishes to die in 1 Kings 19:4 from despair while Jonah wishes to die in Jonah 4:3, 8–9 from anger. For both, death is a way out of being a prophet. Their lives have become unbearable. Interestingly, notes Løland Levinson, God grants neither prophet his request. By appointing a successor, Elijah does get some professional relief, but he does not die. In fact, Løland Levinson keenly observes, Elijah never dies. Unlike Elijah, Jonah receives no consolation. His anger remains unresolved at the book’s conclusion. [End Page 446] In chapter 4, Løland Levinson considers the unique death-wish motif found in Job and Jeremiah. Instead of expressing the desire to end their lives, Job (3:11–16) and Jeremiah (20:18) express the desire to eradicate their lives. They wish they had never been born to avoid the suffering experienced in their lives. Løland Levinson interestingly distinguishes between the desire to eradicate one’s life from the desire to die or to be killed, and argues that Jeremiah and Job, unlike Elijah and Jonah, do not long for death as relief from their suffering. Rather, they wish to have never been born to experience the suffering in the first place. Chapter 5 examines death wishes as expressions of wishful thinking...