Judges

I hope that this review – which I have intended to keep under 1000 words – has given some sense of the strengths and weaknesses of this commentary. I think it is a faith-filled, and potentially useful example of a ‘discourse analysis’ commentary, yet at the same time that particular model does seem to me to be possibly less than helpful. By breaking the text up in such a granular way, a great number of pages of this commentary didn’t seem particularly useful – yet the work clearly had value, as I was generally very well served (in my devotional time – and, when the time comes, in my work on commentaries and books on Judges) by the authors explanation and theological comment sections. So in my view in spite of the format, this commentary succeeds. But it’s size, length and complexity mean it is probably less helpful to most pastors than I might have imagined. [Full Review]

The ZECOT is an excellent commentary series. The layout engages the reader is the various aspects of the exegetical task, from parsing individual words to syntactical and discourse analysis to reflecting theologically on the text. While the Judges volume is weaker on the latter, it is a super tool to aid engagement with the original Hebrew text. [Full Review]