This is clearly something I'm going to have to return to in order to better appreciate, I think. Reading it on its own without much knowledge about what was going on (I mean I've read The Bible, but the historical context stuff is not my specialty or really even my like knowledge base) means I got like basically the barebones of what was happening and not much beyond that. Which I recognize is my fault, not the text's, but definitely did impact how I was reading it. 

(Also my complaint about this edition [Barnes and Noble classics]: inconsistent bolding of the 5 line mark intervals meant sometimes I had no idea if there was an explanatory note or not and it was confusing and slowed me down!)