concludes that even if it were possible to offer a “coherent parsing or
equivalent transposition [of those last lines] into normal syntax,” it would
be a violation of the poem’s genius to do so. We can in an important sense
just “make out” what the poem wants us to understand, and we should
leave it at that. “To transpose, to paraphrase into correctness, is to relin-
quish both the motion and the meaning of the poem’s meaning.” 50 In the
fi nal analysis, the poem needs those last lines to break with normalcy, to lie
just beyond coherency and translatability. Only by creating that diffi culty
for the reader does the poem become fully itself.
Something like that is true of parts of scripture as well. Think, for
example, of the story of the beloved disciple who, after outrunning Peter
to Jesus’ sepulcher, hesitates outside until Peter has passed him, and then
follows the elder disciple into the empty tomb (Jn. 20:3–7). The Gospel
tells us that “he saw and believed” (20:8), and then immediately adds:
“for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from
the dead” (20:9). What sense does that make? What is he believing if he
does not even understand that Christ has risen from the dead? Or think
of Joshua’s encounter with the “commander of the Lord’s army” near
Jericho (Josh. 5:13–15). From the fi rst, Joshua has been told that the
Lord will be with him and Israel, doing wonders on their behalf, giving
them the land. But suddenly, on the threshold of their fi rst conquest, the
Lord’s angel appears, sword in hand (like the angel guarding the gate to
Eden), and reveals that he is neither with Joshua nor with his enemies.
Or, for a fi nal example, think of the Akedah (Gen. 22:1–19). What are we
supposed to do with these texts? Or, better, what is happening to us as we
grapple with them? For sure, they generate diffi culties for us, resisting any
knock-down interpretations; but this is not a diffi culty we should try to
overcome. To use Steiner’s terms, we should not try “paraphrasing them
into normalcy.” And we need not ignore them, either. We should, instead,
let them do the work they do best, defl ecting our attempts at mastery,
stirring up questions we might otherwise be too afraid or too smug to ask.
The Spirit also uses the scriptures’ intertextual echoes and allusions to
generate formative diffi culties for readers. 51 Think, for example, of Jonah’s
protest against YHWH’s mercy on Nineveh. Overlooking the repentant,
spared city, the prophet exclaims: “This is why I fl ed to Tarshish at the
beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punish-
ing” (Jh. 4:2). Strikingly, Jonah leaves off the second half the biblical pas-
sage he is quoting, which concludes: “yet by no means clearing the guilty,
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