From Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament:

…it is clear that Israel’s testimony is intended to generate an accepted, normative narrative construal of reality in which the members of Israel can live… It is readily imaginable that other testimonies were always available in Israel, other construals of reality, some of which were powerful and attractive, some of which were no doubt more “commonsense” and more readily championed by the dominant legitimating power. Thus Israel’s testimony (as revelation that becomes canon) always has an edge of advocacy and urgency to it, for its members can, in any given circumstance, fall out of the life-world generated by this rhetoric. We may imagine that some who heard and accepted the testimony did so completely and without reserve… There is no reason to imagine that ancient Israel lacked the same passions and commitments known in our own contemporary communities concerning the same testimony.