The stories of Israel provide, for us as readers, a view on existence that reveals an understanding of God that is more often misunderstood than received. The mixture of God and creation (particularly the human creature) in these stories often leave us with more of a sense of God’s absence than God’s presence. This is so first, because of the overt violence in the stories and secondly because the stories take on a mythical guise with scenes of miraculous intervention, the likes of which none of us has seen.