As a biblical scholar dealing daily with the Bible’s terseness, I sometimes wryly wonder if the writers kept one eye on the price of papyrus and parchment! Yet the more I study, the more I applaud the authors for the creative, succinct ways they hook our hearts and engage our imaginations.In particular, as I discuss here, they deftly use a variety of literary tools—including similes (introduced by “as” and “like”), metaphors, and the pronoun “who”—to add color, character, and meaning to the biblical story. Here are some examples:
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