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...
Discover how the Psalms can speak powerfully to today’s church, offering lyrical theology that shapes prayer, reflection, preaching, and worship.This volume in the Belief series explores how the Psalms speak as lyrical theology in today’s world. Drawing on the Psalter’s genres of praise and lament, the Psalms’ reception in Christian tradition, and their range of musical settings, Kris Kvam and Don Saliers show how the Psalms can teach, comfort, and challenge the church. Giving the biblical tradi...
With fresh insight and scholarly depth, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary reclaims these often-overlooked texts as far more than a retelling of Israel’s past. They are vital witnesses to the theological and communal imagination of a people rebuilding identity in the shadow of empire.In this critical and illuminating volume of the Old Testament Library, internationally respected scholar Louis C. Jonker reveals Chronicles as a dynamic text that reinterprets sacred traditions to help the postexilic...
Step into the world of the Hebrew Bible and discover how the contexts of the people who lived in it illuminate and deepen our understanding of the Scriptures.
In Ancient Israel and Judah, Beth Tanner takes readers on a compelling journey through the historical and cultural landscapes of ancient Israel and Judah, bringing the Hebrew Bible to life in an approachable manner yet to be achieved.
An essential guide for anyone new to biblical study, this book bridges the divide between traditional reli...
Unraveling creation, covenant, and family in a foundational biblical narrative.
In this thought-provoking addition to the Old Testament Library, David L. Petersen offers a fresh reading of the book of Genesis, understanding it to address the creation of the universe, the beginnings of human culture, and the origins of Israel, all of which are anchored in the central motif of family. Petersen traces the intricate lives and relationships of the ancestral families—from the story of Adam and Eve to ...
Womanist Midrash, Volume 2, continues Wilda Gafney’s unique and imaginative work of in-depth explorations of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures.
This volume focuses on women and girls in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. As in her successful and widely read first volume, Gafney uses her own translations and offers midrashic interpretations of the biblical text rooted in the African American preaching and rabbinic traditions to tell the stories of a variety of female char...
"One the greatest challenges the church faces today," writes Jerome F. D. Creach, "is to interpret and explain passages in the Bible that seem to promote or encourage violence" (Violence in Scripture, 1). In the past fifteen years, a number of books have been published to help people make sense of God's violent behavior in the Bible. Yet very little has been written about how to use these (and other) violent texts constructively in church. This leaves religious practitioners—pastors, priests, Su...
Christians insist that love stands at the heart of who God is. Yet, when we talk about love in the Hebrew Bible, how much do we really know? Possessing such a belief alone does not mean that we possess a clear understanding of what love is. Are we aware of how often divine and human love are tied up with the idea of preference for one individual or group over another? Do we know how often descriptions of love involve questions of power, authority, and gender? Do we see that love is connected to ...
The Hebrew Bible displays a complicated attitude toward cities. Much of the story tells of a rural, agrarian society, yet those stories were written by people living in urban environments. Moreover, cities frequently appear in a negative light; the Hebrew slaves in the book of Exodus were forced to build cities, and the book of Samuel’s critique of monarchy assumes an urban setting that supports that monarchy. At the same, time Ezra-Nehemiah makes restoration of Jerusalem and its wall a holy pri...
Womanist Midrash, Volume 1 is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Using her own translations, Wilda Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the socio...
Designed for both Hebrew and non-Hebrew students, A Handbook to Old Testament Exegesis offers a fresh, hands-on introduction to exegesis of the Old Testament. William P. Brown begins not with the biblical text itself but with the reader, helping students to identify their own interpretive lenses before engaging the biblical text. Brown guides the student through a wide variety of interpretive approaches, including modern methodologies—feminist, womanist, Latino/a, queer, post...
One of the Twelve Minor Prophetic books, the book of Micah contains the famous quote "what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8). However, many of us do not know the circumstances that led the prophet to these famous words. This serious commentary by Daniel Smith- Christopher analyzes the historical, social, and literary context of the book of Micah. Smith-Christopher presents a challenging perspective o...
For over a decade, A Biblical History of Israel has gathered praise and criticism for its unapologetic approach to reconstructing the historical landscape of ancient Israel through a biblical lens. In this much- anticipated second edition, the authors reassert that the Old Testament should be taken seriously as a historical document alongside other literary and archaeological sources.Significantly revised and updated, A Biblical History of Israel, Second Edition includes the author...
This study considers the historical, cultural, and literary significance of some of the most important Ancient Near East (ANE) texts that illuminate the Hebrew Bible. Christopher B. Hays provides primary texts from the Ancient Near East with a comparison to literature of the Hebrew Bible to demonstrate how Israel's Scriptures not only draw from these ancient contexts but also reshape them in a unique way.Hays offers a brief introduction to comparative studies, then lays out exampl...
Parables make up one-third of Jesus' speech in the New Testament. In this volume, Richard Lischer provides an expert guide to these parables and proposes an important distinction between reading and interpreting the parables.Emphasizing the importance of reading the parables versus interpreting them, Lischer asserts that reading offers a kind of breathing space to explore historical, literary, theological, and socio-political dimensions of the parables and their various meanings, ...
Those who study the Bible are becoming increasingly attentive to the significance of economics when examining ancient texts and the cultures that produced them. This book looks at the socioeconomic landscape of Second Temple Judea, from the end of the Babylonian exile to the destruction of the temple by the Romans (532 BCE to 70 CE). Adams carefully examines key themes, paying special attention to family life, the status of women, and children, while engaging relevant textual and a...
In seven readable chapters, renowned scholar Patrick D. Miller delves into the biblical book of Psalms. Miller explores what the psalms can teach us about God, our relationship to God, and what God wants for us. He tackles over a dozen of the most beloved psalms that explore themes of God's existence; creation and redemption; praise and thanksgiving; and grace, mercy, and justice. He approaches the material in various ways, sometimes focusing on what a particular psalm can tell us,...
This is the first English translation of Bernd Janowski's incisive anthropological study of the Psalms, originally published in German in 2003 as Konfliktgespräche mit Gott. Eine Anthropologie der Psalmen (Neukirchener). Janowski begins with an introduction to Old Testament anthropology, concentrating on themes of being forsaken by God, enmity, legal difficulties, and sickness. Each chapter defines a problem and considers it in relation to anthropological insights from related f...
World-renowned biblical interpreter Walter Brueggemann invites readers to take a closer look at the subversive messages found within the Old Testament. Truth Speaks to Power explores the radical and subversive political implications of the Bible. Brueggemann asserts that the Bible presents a "sustained contestation" over truth, in which established institutions of power do not always prevail. But this is not always obvious at first glance. A closer look reveals that the text actually...
This collection of essays by prominent scholars surveys the ways in which the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments—has been understood and appropriated from biblical times until today. With chapters devoted to major thinkers—such as Aquinas, Barth, Calvin, Luther, Maimonides, and Wesley—the writers explore ways the Decalogue has provided theological, ethical, moral, and devotional reflection throughout many facets of religious thought. The pieces reveal both the co...
Traditional understandings of God as deliverer depict God as a mighty liberator-warrior and wrathful avenger. Juliana Claassens explores alternative Old Testament metaphors that portray God as mourner, mother, and midwife—images that resist the violence and bloodshed associated with the dominant warrior imagery. Claassens discusses how metaphors of God as life giver began to develop in the aftermath of the trauma of Israelite exile. She offers compelling examples of how ...
In this new addition to the Old Testament Library series, Graeme Auld writes, "This book is about David." The author demonstrates how all the other personalities in First and Second Samuel--including Samuel, for whom the books were named--are present so that we may see and know David better.These fascinating stories detail the lives of David, his predecessors, and their families. Auld explains that though we read these books from beginning to end, we need to understand that they wer...
This volume invites readers to get up close and personal with one of the most respected and beloved writers of the last four decades. Carolyn J. Sharp has transcribed numerous table conversations between Walter Brueggemann and his colleagues and former students, in addition to several of his addresses and sermons from both academic and congregational settings. The result is the essential Brueggemann: readers will learn about his views on scholarship, faith, and the church; get in...
The Women's Bible Commentary is a trusted, classic resource for biblical scholarship, written by some of the best feminist scholars in the field today. This twentieth anniversary edition features brand new or thoroughly revised essays to reflect newer thinking in feminist interpretation and hermeneutics. It comprises commentaries on every book of the Bible, including the apocryphal books; essays on the reception history of women in the Bible; and essays on feminist critical metho...
The study of biblical Aramaic, an ancient Semitic language from which the Hebrew alphabet was derived, is necessary for understanding texts written during certain periods of early Jewish and Christian history and is especially important for the study of the books of Daniel and Ezra. This new textbook is a thorough guide to learning to read and translate biblical Aramaic and includes an introduction to the language, examples of texts for practice translations, and helpful comparison ...
Isaiah 40-66 (IBC)
Author(s):Julia O'Brien
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