Retribution in Biblical Texts: A Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

Divine retribution is both a teaching and a core-tenet in Christianity. A large portion of Biblical texts come to embody the righteous judgment of the Almighty Lord, His gracious as well as wrath character. This paper is an attempt to pinpoint the stylistic devices and features of retribution in Biblical texts. It aims to identify the stylistic phonological, syntactic, and semantic devices of retribution in Biblical texts and find out the function of each. Furthermore, it aims to explain the overall functions such texts of retribution perform and how the overall function of these texts and the functions of the utilized stylistic devices are coalesced to produce a stylistic interpretation to these texts. It is hypothesized that Biblical texts of retribution utilize specific stylistic phonological, syntactic, and semantic devices. Besides, it is hypothesized that the functions these devices perform fall in line with the overall functions the Biblical texts of retribution have. A model is developed to analyze the Biblical texts of retribution. In addition, statistical findings are used to support the results. The findings of the analysis validate the hypotheses mentioned above.