The ideas for this book began during a class discussion in an undergraduate introduction to the Bible course at Siena College in the fall of 2005. As I introduced my class to the notion of 2 Sam 12:1–4 as a juridical parable, one student asked about Joab's place in Nathan's parable. I responded by using the multivalent interpretation of the parable as I remembered it from a class I took with Larry L. Lyke at Yale Divinity School in the fall of 1997. Lyke's wonderful book on parabolic narrative, titled King David and the Wise Woman of Tekoa, has influenced my thinking on Hebrew Bible parables a great deal, as evidenced by the number of times I cite it in this book. Yet, when I consulted his book after that particular class, I realized that I had not remembered his interpretation correctly and that he did not actually address the place of Joab in Nathan's parable. My student's question and my misreading of Lyke got me thinking about how parables operate in the Hebrew Bible. Soon I saw the need for a serious re-evaluation of some influential scholarly notions and assumptions about genre and function in relation to Hebrew Bible parables.

My first attempt to articulate the need for re-evaluation came in a paper on 2 Sam 12:1–6 that I presented at the Society of Biblical Literature's 2006 Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting. Further research along these lines found encouragement and support when Stephen L. Cook, F. W. “Chip” Dobbs-Allsopp, Tod Linafelt, and the rest of the region's executive board nominated the paper for the Society's 2007 Regional Scholar's Award. I would like to thank them all for their role in this project's development.