Judges

McCann's Judges (Interpretation, 2002) offers genuine value in its canonical framing, its tracing of the book's progressive deterioration motif, and its pastoral attentiveness to the role of women — but it carries significant theological baggage that warrants caution. Most seriously, McCann repeatedly limits divine sovereignty: he explicitly states that "God cannot prevent" injustice and violence, that God's "quality of life is diminished" by human sin, and that God "risks" the failure of his purposes — all formulations drawn from Fretheim's open-theist leanings rather than from the text itself. He even parenthetically describes God as among "the big losers" in the Samson narrative, a stark contrast to Block's well-grounded conclusion that "the true hero in the book is God and God alone." Hermeneutically, McCann advocates a "hermeneutic of suspicion toward Scripture" and reduces the Canaanites to a purely symbolic code-word for oppressive social systems — a move that dissolves the historical seriousness of the text and creates an unresolved logical tension: real battles, real deaths, but victims who are only metaphors. His identification of Jephthah's daughter as the primary Christ-type in Judges is directly rejected by Butler's WBC as "going too far," and is internally inconsistent with McCann's own insistence that suffering is not inherently redemptive. Useful for its homiletical creativity, but needs to be read alongside Block (NAC), Webb (NICOT), or Younger (NIVAC) for a theologically reliable treatment.