This slim monograph begins with the author's modest note that she does not have a biblical studies “card to carry in my wallet” (ix); rather, Charney is a scholar of rhetoric, and she applies her skills in rhetorical analysis to a series of psalms in order to understand if, why, and how ancient Israelites worked to persuade God. Despite her lack of formal training in biblical studies, or perhaps because of it, she offers insightful, sensitive, and important new findings valuable to biblical scholars and interested lay audiences alike.
“Arguing with God,” she claims, “is a key theme in the Hebrew Bible.” While the ancient Greeks wrestled physically and rhetorically with other Greek citizens, the Israelites wrestle physically (in the case of the patriarch Jacob) and rhetorically (in her chosen text corpus of first-person psalms) with God. When these psalmists attempt to persuade God to intervene in their lives, they engage in rhetoric, “the art/faculty of choosing from among the available means of persuasion in any given situation” (1–2). Even further, Charney deduces rhetorical situations or starting points that originally prompted the compositions. She claims accurately that these situations “are necessarily speculative, but they are not undisciplined” (9); she does not pursue the form-critical practice of attributing psalms to particular biblical episodes or cultic observances.
Some elements of rhetorical criticism chafe against more traditional historical and literary biblical study. For example, Charney argues that “the task of a rhetorical approach is to spell out how apparent digressions actually build a connected line of argument in a given psalm and contribute to a coherent and persuasive reading of the text as a whole” (8). However, is that strategy prudent if any given psalm may be composite, corrupt, or part of a larger corpus? Perhaps a digression is editorial or scribal rather than original. Charney does not present her understanding of the composition and/or canonization of the psalms either individually or in larger groups, an unfortunate omission.
In chapter 1, Charney argues that praise is the most important currency Israelites have at their disposal for persuading God; God reciprocates by answering and protecting his people. Inspired both by Moshe Greenberg's conception of prayer-praise and Aristotle's formulation of epideictic rhetoric, she solves a possible paradox of rhetorical studies: if persuasion is concerned with changing hearers’ attitudes, what changes when an Israelite praises God if that society already accepts God's value? She concludes that Israelites themselves need to praise God in order to engage continually with God.
Praise can function as a “negative currency” with God in instances of death (which would cause the speaker's praise to cease), quid pro quo (praise will only continue if God rescues), and taunting (would God want an enemy to doubt God's power?). Case studies of four psalms follow, most notably Psalm 16, where Charney utilizes both lexical and rhetorical evidence to propose that the psalm's speaker is “a clear-eyed realist, not an unshakable priest” (32). Her examination of the short Psalm 131, a praise-free exception that proves her rule, failed to convince this reviewer: even if the speaker be “an extraordinarily passive person with little to say for himself” (37), how expressive and haunting (if unpersuasive) those few words remain.
In chapter 2, Charney's case study of Psalm 4 exemplifies the benefits of combining rhetorical and biblical studies. In terminology belonging to the former field, “amplitude” is a strategy whereby speakers allocate material in a text based on the views of their audience. “Looking for where writers have devoted the most space is an important clue to the point they consider most important or most controversial” (40). Psalm 4 is often read as a speaker's defense against a false accusation. However, Charney shows that the bulk of the psalm rebukes opponents and tries to persuade them to return to faithfulness. She views this psalm (along with Pss 62 and 82) as “public efforts by confident speakers to persuade skeptical or immoral hearers to return to moral behavior” (39).
Chapter 3 focuses on lament psalms, and her case studies (Pss 54 and 13) demonstrate that such texts have a three-part structure: address to God, description of the complaint, and proposal for reciprocal action. In “deliberative arguments” such as these, the speaker makes the hearer aware of a problem and then seeks a remedy. Charney compares this formula to “policy arguments” in both ancient Greek and modern society, though the benefits of this comparison are not easily apparent without further defining the genre. Chapter 4 discusses three psalms (44, 22, 17) where speakers strongly protest their innocence (rather than admitting fault and asking forgiveness), hoping to change God's attitudes and behaviors towards them. Most importantly, Charney says, these psalms are differentiated by the speakers’ “claim of worthiness” (81).
Charney defines kairos as the “right moment” for a speaker to speak, and in chapter 5, she turns her attention to the kairos of first-person imprecatory psalms. Spoken curses explicitly force God to intervene in the speaker's (in)justice, she argues, novelly observing that the speakers of Pss 7, 35, and 109 undermine their own cases as they speak, “leav[ing] it to God to sort it out and give each party what he or she deserves” (86). And though Israelites do not admit wrongdoing in their lament-psalms as freely as do Mesopotamians, for example, chapter 6 discusses a handful of psalms where the speaker does admit guilt. The structure, themes, and rhetorical strategies for persuading God that Charney outlined in early chapters fall away in Pss 130, 38, and 51: “The guilty seem to lack the standing to enter into the give-and-take of favor-and-praise negotiation” (112). She concludes that the Israelites likely had alternative forums for expiating guilt, rarely resorting to recitation of psalms for this purpose.
Charney argues that speakers evaluate their audience and choose the form of address based on what will be most effective. But what rhetorical choices are best when the audience is the speaker him or herself? Chapter 7 explores self-persuading psalms, where speakers remind themselves of God's faithfulness or work through their own anger at a God who would allow their enemies to prosper. Her studies of the logos and pathos in Pss 77 and 73 are effective, though her use of the term “wisdom” to describe the lessons the speakers of these psalms learn is confusing in the context of biblical studies.
The author uses Robert Alter's translations of the psalms (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), though in many instances (p. 52 stands out), Charney's rhetorical sensitivities outshine even Alter's lodestar. I found myself wishing that she had provided more of her own translations. Increased use of Hebrew and more detailed reviews of previous literature would have made the text even more useful to scholars. However, this quick and easy-to-read study demonstrates that Charney is indeed a card-carrying biblicist who possesses great insight and a unique point of view.
