Abstract

My dissertation, "Building Houses and Planting Vineyards: The Inner-biblical Discourse of an Ancient Israelite Wartime Curse," explores the inner-biblical discourse that developed around a prominent ancient Israelite curse. The curse threatens the livelihood of ancient Israel in the following words, "You will build a house, but not live in it; you will plant a vineyard, but not harvest its fruit." The dissertation reconstructs the history of discourse that arose around this curse by examining the different biblical texts that cite, allude to, and discuss this curse. As this dissertation will argue, the curse arose as part of ancient Israel's confrontation with Assyrian military imperialism and persisted well into the Persian period. By reconstructing the various stages of the curse's history, the dissertation highlights the different historical, social, and economic forces that contributed to the curse's persistent prominence in biblical literature. In addition, the dissertation sheds new light on the nature and strategies of interpretation and discourse within the biblical texts.