Acknowledgments | vii
Introduction | 1
1. Staying with the Violence | 13
Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining
Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 •
Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36
2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna | 45
Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot:
Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the
Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy,
Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86
3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities | 96
Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 •
Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 •
Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts
in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139
4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution | 145
Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution
and Containment, 178
5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence | 193
The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 •
The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 •
The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230
Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours | 241
Notes | 257
Works Cited | 317
Index | 335
