the Body Politic.” The former was an invited lecture presented to the Society of Christian Ethics. In both chapters, Brueggemann carries forward not only the dialectical approach that is central to his theological method but his persistent attention to social and literary dimensions of the text That attention is not, in these essays, primarily a methodological concern. It is an effort to uncover the role of social power (and powerlessness) and the practice of rhetoric in Israel’s social discourse.