This article analyzes the use of alliteration in the narrative and poetic texts of the Deborah cycle (Judges 4-5) and seeks to show how the rhetorical function of alliteration in each account is distinctive to its respective genre. In the narrative account, alliteration serves the plot and irony of the story, often playing on proper nouns and spanning multiple verses. In the poetic account, alliteration has a structural effect of both demarcating cola and strophes and unifying distinct segments of the poem.
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