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Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Old Testament books of wisdom and poetry carry themselves differently from those of the Pentateuch, the histories, or the prophets. The divine voice does not peal from Sinai, there are no narratives carried along by prophetic interpretation, nor are oracles declaimed by a prophet. Here Scripture often speaks in the words of human response to God and God’s world. The hymns, laments, and...

the retribution principle so that it not only describes the remedial consequences of past actions (reward for righteousness, punishment or suffering for wickedness) but also now allows that suffering may be disciplinary and thereby preventative as it functions to restrain someone from following an unacceptable course of action. With this redefinition he is now no longer obligated to identify past sins of Job’s that would be sufficient to explain the severity of the punishment experienced in his dramatic
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