Emblematic Gestures as a Narrative Device in Samuel

David T. Stewart

An inquiry into the use of gesture in the Samuel narratives focuses on Tamar's gestural utterance in 2 Sam 13:19. This text reveals emblematic gesture, posture, and action that should not be dismissed as just grief. The article makes use of nonverbal communication models to decompose Tamar's utterance into its constituent parts or kinemorphemes. Tamar's kinetic monologue forms a complex literary and kinemic structure. A comparison of her utterance with other patterns of grief in the Bible and homologous gestures in ancient Near Eastern art and texts suggests both the intensity of Tamar's utterance and her sense of shame. Tamar's particular utterance is then placed within the textual "chain of utterances" concerning both Tamar and her namesake ancestor. The story of Tamar bat-David inverts the tale of the earlier Tamar in artful ways.

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