Forti pays particular attention to the contextual meaning and cultural environment of animal imagery to show how faunal images are used in the formulation and communication of didactic truths and principles regarding human behavior. These depictions can occasionally function as by imbuing animals with human characteristics of language, thought, and empathy, animal life in order to illustrate basic moral precepts. This volume focuses upon two principal poetical devices—refrains and secondary interpolations—in which animal imagery in the Psalms is often employed as a stage-setting device. A literary analysis of the structure of the psalms in which this faunal imagery is employed reveals the figurative and symbolic impact of this particular domain upon the poetic texture of each psalm. This methodology has diachronic consequences, demonstrating that both poetical devices may function as means of composition in the ongoing process of creating liturgy.