SOUND AND MEANING IN THE HEBREW BIBLE: IMPLICATIONS FOR EXEGESIS

Scholars are becoming increasingly aware of soundplay in the Hebrew Bible. Even with such awareness, however, soundplay often remains relegated to aesthetics. Certainly, it is true that it can aid in the aural delight of texts. Nevertheless, I argue that soundplay does more. I claim it has rhetorical significance. This significance can be missed if scholars attend only to the semantics and syntax of the Hebrew text or consider soundplay as ornamental. This article seeks to demonstrate some of the purposes of soundplay and the implications for exegesis. Two well-known prophetic texts (Isaiah 5; Amos 8) serve as illustrations for its aesthetic and rhetorical contributions.