that we could never do something like it. A careful study shows there is more to the biblical writers’ method than meets the eye. In many ways, the easiest thing to do is to say as an interpreter that the rendering does not make sense, but is simply “ancient” method or “atomism” that we cannot or should not emulate. There may well be some method to what strikes us initially as seeming exegetical madness. The key premise of this essay is that God works both in his words and in revelatory events that