Endlessly cunning, elusive, and playful—the Bible consistently unsettles even as it assures. Walter Brueggemann reveals exactly how Scripture exposes the inadequacy of the assumptions and habits that shape our lives. He finds inside Israel’s ancient poetry, prophecy, narrative, and legal covenants new words that create new peoples. In so doing this book provokes a theology of transformation—one that compels new social, economic, and political practices. Brueggemann’s reading reveals that we are not fated to live a life of greed, anxiety, and violence, but instead can embrace a shared life of well-being grounded in an investment in the common good. Brueggemann shows the endless ways by which the Bible provokes new life for transformed peoples.
Introduction by Davis Hankins
Part 1: Poetic Cadences that Create Hope
1. Conflicted Human Agency
2. Conflicted Divine Agency
3. Misbegotten Hope
4. Poems vs. Memos
5. Biblical Language
Part 2: Narrative Complexities that Challenge
6. Food Fight
7. Departure without Arrival
8. The Nightmare of Amnesia
9. The Antidote to Amnesia
10. Double Agency
Part 3: Legal Covenants that Coalesce
11. From Narrative to Policy
12. The God Who Gives Rest
13. Covenantal Risks and Rewards
Part 4: Imaginative Provocations that Compel
14. Testimony
15. Obedience
16. Slow Wisdom
17. Bail Out
18. Jubilee
Retrospect
