Ancient Israel and Judea existed under the shadow of the great empires of their time. These empires were built around the notion of sovereignty. But how did ancient Israelite and Judean writers think about sovereignty? Any attempt to elucidate this question must grapple with the narrative work known as The Priestly History (P), now embedded in the Pentateuch. This dissertation argues that P is characterized by a single-minded commitment to Yahweh’s sovereignty—the idea that the supreme power of command belongs, absolutely and in perpetuity, to the Israelite deity. The first half of the dissertation shows that this radical commitment to sovereignty is already reflected in how the story is told. P’s narrator is constructed as a subservient speaker who subordinates its own voice to the voice of Yahweh, the divine character it quotes. A consummate work of literary craftsmanship, P projects a world in which Yahweh's word reigns supreme. But what is the place of human agency in such a world? To address this question, the second half of the dissertation explores three episodes in P where Yahweh's rule is threatened by illicit acts of fraternal and sexual intimacy (Lev 10; Num 25:6-18; Num 5:11-31). Analyzing these texts in their literary-historical context, I argue that P’s model of authority is predicated upon the effacement of human intimacy. I also show that, in P, female sexual agency is conceptualized as a sovereign threat. Seeking to make contributions to biblical scholarship, the history of political thought, and literary theory, this dissertation highlights the power of literature to probe the limits of prevalent ideologies.