In this discerning study of the relationship of the tragic vision to the Hebrew tradition, W. Lee Humphreys suggests various ways in which Israel confronted the power of tragic vision at certain points in its tradition. Humphreys demonstrates how tragedy, the literary genre and 'the tragic vision' maintain a delicate but vital balance between fate and flaw. In conclusion he contends that the tragic vision finds fullest expression at points of radical dislocation in human history. At these times the essential questions of existence are reopened, rehearsed and relived as the tragic vision questions all previous answers and dogmatic claims to the meaning of life.