Julia O’Brien

Julia M. O’Brien is Professor Emerita of Biblical Studies and the former Paul H. and Grace L. Stern Chair in Old Testament Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary. She is associate editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, sixth edition; editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies; editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Minor Prophets; and author of Prophets beyond Activism: Rethinking the Prophetic Roots of Social Justice, Challenging Prophetic Metaphor, and Micah in the Wisdom Commentary series.

An Interpretation Bible Commentary

Author(s):
Julia O'Brien

Discover how the timeless words of Isaiah speak into today’s crises, offering insight, challenge, and hope for contemporary readers.Preachers and teachers of the Bible know that the present continually reshapes our understanding of the past, including the texts Christians hold sacred. In Isaiah 40–66, Julia O’Brien explores how the authors of Second and Third Isaiah reworked their religious traditions to address the concerns of their own times, how these texts have been read across diverse commu...
Price: $45.00
Publication Date: 11/17/2026
Rethinking the Prophetic Roots of Social Justice

Author(s):
Julia O'Brien

Prophets beyond Activism insightfully challenges the common progressive narrative that the prophets of ancient Israel were primarily concerned with social justice. Instead it daringly offers more life-giving ways of engaging the prophetic books for the causes of justice.The assumption that the prophets of ancient Israel were primarily concerned with social justice so permeates the thinking and the discourse of progressive Christianity that it might be considered an interpretive orthodoxy. For ex...
Price: $30.00
Publication Date: 08/27/2024
Theology and Ideology in the Prophets

Author(s):
Julia O'Brien

The prophets of the Old Testament use a wide variety of metaphors to describe God and to portray people in relation to God. Some of these metaphors are familiar and soothing; others are unfamiliar and confusing. Still others portray God in ways that are difficult and uncomfortable--God as abusive husband, for instance, or as neglectful father. Julia O'Brien searches the prophetic books for these metaphors, looking for ways in which the different images intersect and build off each o...
Price: $38.00
Publication Date: 10/03/2008