I began this book by saying it would deal with tragedy as we meet it in particular biblical texts and not as we abstract it in theory. I end it with an afterword which is not a conclusion. For to write a conclusion I would need to draw together arguments from previous chapters – perhaps to dispute with those who maintain there is no tragedy in the Bible and to show how my analysis proves that the stories of Saul, of Jephthah, of the members of Saul's house, and of David are tragic – and, finally, to tie my observations up into a neat interpretive package, thus sparing the reader the need to engage what I hope are substantive arguments about the Bible's tragic dimension in the preceding chapters. Because my interest lies in texts, not theory, I have avoided, insofar as possible, generic claims about the Bible's tragic vision in favor of detailed analysis of specific instances of biblical tragedy (using a working definition of tragedy broad enough to include the Greeks, Shakespeare, biblical literature, and modern works).