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The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi is unavailable, but you can change that!

In modern writing, a variety of written markers—italics, bold type, punctuation, parentheses, and so forth—are used to indicate emphasis and clarify meaning. The authors of the Old Testament could not rely on such devices since their writings were originally composed for oral presentation. They instead used literary structure to highlight certain ideas and to convey meaning and emphasis...

as the turning point or climax or highlight of the piece (e.g., a-b-c-d-c′-b′-a′). Thus in the symmetrically arranged Book of Amos the central unit (Amos 5:1–17) features Amos’s call to repentance; in the Song of Songs the center (Song 3:6–5:1) serves as the book’s climax, celebrating the lovers’ wedding; and in Ruth the center (chap. 2) represents the story’s turning point—the meeting of Ruth and Boaz. Therefore, if a composition is found to have a symmetric configuration, the central unit’s key
Pages 18–19
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