This monograph on biblical linguistics is a highly specialized, pragmatic investigation of the controversial question of "foregrounding"GC ?o the deviation from some norm or conventionGC ?o in Old Testament narratives. The author presents and examines the two main sources of pragmatic foregrounding: events or states deviating from well-established schemata, structures of reader expectation that can be manipulated by the narrator to highlight specific "chunks" of discourse; and evaluative devices, which are used by the narrator to indicate to the reader the point of the story and direct its interpret