At the 2006 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Prophetic Texts in their Ancient Contexts section devoted a session to the theme 'The Aesthetics of Violence'. Participants were invited to explore multiple dimensions of prophetic texts and their violent rhetoric. This volume collects those essays. '[The book] takes violent rhetoric seriously as a powerful datum of the Bible that is substantive and intentional and not as simply an embarrassing side issue...[It] is an invitation to think again about violence in the Bible-not to dismiss it as objectionable and unacceptable, but to recognize it as an inescapable vehicle for saying what must be said in a society narcotized by denial and despair.' -Christian Century