We are about to enter the hermeneutical circle...

In fact, it is a spiral which begins in wide curves and--if success befalls our reading--winding about, narrows its circles and takes us to the core. But how to make a start? Not a single method warrants our access to the work in advance; every text requires its own hermeneutics and the annoying thing is that the outlines cannot be drawn until after the event. Yet perhaps one guideline of general validity can be given: go into the text carefully, in an attitude of confidence, thus hoping to find an entrance to the work, those keys to its understanding, which the stylistic means of the text offer to us. On this basis a provisional structure can be designed, which in turn integrates and interprets the stylistic means.

--J. P. Fokkelman in the introduction to his Narrative Art in Genesis, Specimens of Stylistic and Structural Analysis.

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Thought I'd lay that on the table. Having done so, I'm going back to work on the paper (an exegesis of Genesis 11.1-9).