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...
A critical preaching commentary that serves as a single, reliable resource for engaging the Gospel of Mark.This comprehensive commentary on the Gospel of Mark is designed for preachers seeking a single, reliable resource that brings together rigorous exegesis and practical homiletical insight. Drawing on a literary approach, O. Wesley Allen, Jr., interprets Mark as a unified narrative that rewards careful attention not only to individual passages but also to the broader movement of the Gospel as...
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...
What was it like to be a woman in the biblical period? It depended, in part, on who you were: a queen, a judge, a primary wife, a secondary wife, a widow, a slave, or some other kind of “ordinary woman.” In Women in the Bible, Jaime Clark-Soles investigates how women are presented in Scripture, taking into account cultural views of both ancient societies as well as our own. While women today are exercising leadership in churches across a number of denominations and our scholarly knowledge r...
In this incisive commentary, Nancy Bedford explores Paul's Letter to the Galatians as it addresses pressing issues in the earliest Christian churches. Paul argues that it is not necessary for Gentiles to become full- fledged Jews in order to follow Jesus. In Jesus Christ, differences among people will continue. Bedford sees that equality in Christ (Galatians 3:28) does not erase differences but instead breaks down hierarchical relationships among many different people and groups. She...
Thomas G. Long's insightful commentary on the Pastoral Epistles argues that these often-neglected letters are urgently important for readers today. Some of the issues faced by New Testament churches are ours as well: the lure and peril of "spirituality" for Christians, the character of authentic worship, the qualities needed for sound leadership, and the relationship between family life and the church. Long's interpretations of these books consider contemporary exegetical and theol...
"Christians may not have shared the details of the particular situation of the Roman followers of Jesus, but they have shared for centuries the concern about what faith means for life, and they have turned to Paul to understand what it means to be faithful to our faithful God." —from the introductionFor centuries, the apostle Paul's reflections in the book of Romans have shaped Christian thinking about the gospel of Jesus Christ and how we can be faithful to the gospel. Key ...
"The episodes in 1 and 2 Samuel are striking in their depiction of human characters—priests, soldiers, kings, prophets, and royal advisers—but also significant in how they narrate the central character of this history, the God of Israel. History, in these books, is not simply an accounting of royal intrigue, military battles, and socio-economic struggle but the stage upon which God reveals God's very self. First and Second Samuel relay some of the most memorable vignett...
Feasti ng on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never-before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and hom...
This unique commentary helps preachers see how knowledge of first-century Judaism can help them avoid incorporating misunderstandings and stereotypes into their sermons on the letters. Ronald Allen and Clark Williamson explore insights from recent Christian-Jewish dialogue, continuities between Judaism and the theology of Paul, and the Roman occupation to help preachers understand the Jewish context of the letters. As in their previous book, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming...
In this third and concluding volume of their lectionary commentary collection (Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews and Preaching the Letters without Dismissing the Law), Ronald Allen and Clark Williamson encourage the church and its preachers to rediscover the Old Testament as a vibrant wellspring of Christian faith and life. Preachers often neglect the Old Testament, misrepresent it, or regard its theological content as superseded by Jesus and the New Testament, Allen ...
Feasting on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never- before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homi...
Feasting on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never- before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homi...
Feasting on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never- before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homi...
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, ...
In this latest volume in the Belief series, Daniel L. Migliore plumbs the depth of Paul's letters to the Philippians and to Philemon. With splendid theological reflection, Migliore explores central themes of these remarkable lettersùthemes that include the practice of prayer, righteousness from God, and the work of reconciliation and transformation through Jesus Christ.Migliore shows how Philippians continues to speak to churches that, like the church at Philippi, struggle to be f...
Feasting on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never- before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homi...
Feasting on the Gospels is an all-new, seven-volume preaching series that focuses on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels. Featuring never- before-published essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it a valuable resource for developing sermons. For each Gospel text, preachers will find four essays on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homi...
Praise for the Series
“Written with pastors in mind, this series is an excellent resource for discerning the intention of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures and for preaching the love of God.” —Andrew Sung Park, Professor of Theology and Ethics, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
“With this series, the theological is deliberately brought to the fore, both at the level of the texts and at the level of critics.” —Fernando F. Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early...
The volumes in Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible from Westminster John Knox Press offer a fresh and invigorating approach to all the books of the Bible. Building on a wide range of sources from biblical studies, the history of theology, the church’s liturgical and musical traditions, contemporary culture, and the Christian tradition, noted scholars focus less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a theologically focused commentary that considers the contemporary r...
Jame s Limburg introduces the first six of the minor prophets and provides a commentary that relates to today's world. He demonstrates why attention should be given to the words of these prophets as they communicate the word of God.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is...
Paul' s first letter to the Corinthians was addressed originally to a fledgling mission church in Corinth. Paul's absence from the church had allowed serious problems to arise within the Corinthian community, but the problems that he addresses in this letter do not always seem based on explicitly theological ideas. The brilliance of Paul, though, is that he frames the issues in theological terms and reflects on them in the light of the gospel.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for T...
The Psalms have been at the center of Christian faith and piety for centuries. Now, one of the foremost interpreters of the Psalms explores how they can still claim that place today. In this commentary, James L. Mays sets forth what the Psalms say about God, creation, humanity, and the life of faith. Mays proceeds with an awareness that the Psalms were originally composed for worship, and so he provides an understanding of the psalms as praise and prayer.Interpretation: A Bible C...
Eccl esiastes is a collection of sayings traditionally attributed to Solomon and deemed by some the strangest book in the canon. It comprises an unusual blend of autobiographical references, theological reflections, philosophical musings, and proverbial instructions, all probing the seeming pointlessness of human striving. Brown explores the text as it engages our own culture's era of questioning and search for self-fulfillment.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and P...
This volume studies the biblical book of Judges, which focuses on the period in Israel's history when the nation was ruled by a series of judges. The book describes the progressive deterioration of the nation as a result of the violence and idolatry of the people. Yet the nation also encountered the astounding graciousness of the God who remained faithful to them.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the B...
Isaiah 40-66 (IBC)
Author(s):Julia O'Brien
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