Psalms 101–150 (Rev. ed.)

Leslie Allen is a remarkably talented commentary writer. The set of three volumes in the WBC was started by Craigie, but when complete had 3 different authors. Personally, I think this volume is better than Craigie's volume on Psalms 1-50, though not as good as Goldingay's BCOTWP 3 volume set, even though I prefer Allen's translation to Goldingay's. Some of the WBC voumes spend too much time on minor details, but this one doesn't, though like all WBC volumes, the formatting (font, citation style, and structure) takes away from the overall impact. Nevertheless, this is still worthwhile for pastors, upper-level students, and scholars. Not for the average reader, as it is an advanced, technical commentary series.

This appears to be a classic case of a multi-volume set displaying uneven quality. Craigie’s volume is said to be the strongest and had he written the others this would probably be a top recommendation. (Unfortunately he died after the publication of volume 1.) Allen’s is regarded by most as the next strongest of the three. All of them are rather technical, making them a better choice for pastor or scholar than a general reader. [Full Review]

The WBC on Psalms is in three volumes. Volume 3 on Psalms 101-150 is by Leslie Allen. It starts with a strong text-critical section and concludes with a summary of the basic meaning, with detailed commentary on each verse in between. There's some contemporary significance in the last section. The original versions had much less of that, but the revised version has a lot more. One distracting feature of some Psalms commentaries is over-speculation about which ritual settings each psalm might have originated in, and the WBC volumes focus more on what scholars can say with some confidence. Allen is probably less theological than Craigie, who did the first volume, but more theological than Tate, who did the second and revised the first. This is one of the few recent, complete, in-depth commentaries on this book. The longest book in the Bible doesn't draw many full-length commentaries very often. Tate stands within the evangelical tradition, somewhat broadly construed. He takes views that I'm not willing to endorse in terms of historicity (though I'm not sure I'd deny most of those statements either), but he's more conservative than you'll find in any other recent academic commentary on the Psalms (unless you count VanGemeren's EBC revision). [Full Review]

This commentary has serious weaknesses in setting the psalms in a New Testament context.

Not my favorite commentaries, but these WBC volumes are generally conservative commentaries that seriously engage the history, theology, and scholarship of the Psalms. Wilcock (BST, 2001, 2 vols.) is interesting for canonical considerations but is not technical enough for my concerns.

A balanced and comprehensive Evangelical survey of exegesis in these psalms. [Full Review]