Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

O'Brien's AOTC volume (2004) on Nahum–Malachi is competent in literary analysis and useful in surveying the history of interpretation, but it is seriously compromised by its ideological framework. Most troublingly, she applies derogatory language to God that no other major commentary uses. She calls Yahweh "the rapist" in her treatment of Nahum 3:5–7 and endorses the label "pornoprophetics" for divine actions — a characterisation that is reductive and inflammatory, collapsing the distinction between metaphor and literal description. By contrast, Timmer (ZECOT) reads the same passage as ironic reversal: the attractive prostitute (Nineveh/Ishtar) who consumed her clients is publicly stripped of her glory, with the theological point being Yahweh's dismantling of Assyrian ideology; Robertson (NICOT) and Patterson (WEC) similarly emphasise that God's action is judicial — the exposure of a guilty nation — rather than sexual violence; and Renz (NICOT) discusses the imagery carefully within Ancient Near Eastern conventions of warfare and shame without ever describing God as a perpetrator of sexual assault. Even where scholars acknowledge the difficulty of the imagery (as Renz, Barker, and Bruckner all do), no other major commentary on Nahum equates the metaphorical depiction of a city's fall with divine endorsement of sexual violence. Equally troubling, O'Brien argues (via psychologist Donald Capps) that Malachi's depiction of God as Father "perpetuates the necessary precondition for child abuse" — reasoning that because Malachi portrays God as demanding honour and because authoritarian parenting can lead to abuse, the text itself is complicit. This is a category error: the father-son analogy in Malachi 1:6 functions within the logic of covenant obligation, not domestic violence, as Taylor (NAC) demonstrates by showing the language is rooted in suzerain-vassal loyalty frameworks pervasive in the Ancient Near East and Deuteronomy, and as Verhoef (NICOT) and Hill (TOTC) confirm by treating it as covenantal analogy calling priests to accountability, not servile terror. Her method is also internally inconsistent: she insists the prophetic message cannot be universalised because it is historically contingent, yet universalises twenty-first-century Western feminist ethics as her evaluative standard across all six books — Nahum's imagery assessed against "contemporary views of rape and domestic violence," Malachi's father-son language measured against modern child psychology, Zephaniah's treatment of nations evaluated through postcolonial theory — and she criticises G. A. Smith (1903) for cultural arrogance toward Nahum while applying exactly the same evaluative method with different cultural content, the difference being the substance of the external standard, not the approach. Her reading of Malachi 2:10–16 as entirely about idolatry rather than divorce — including a gender-switch in which Yahweh becomes Judah's "covenant wife," reversing the conventions of the entire prophetic marriage metaphor without any textual signal — is a significant exegetical stretch and a minority position that does not adequately account for the passage's explicitly marital vocabulary (as demonstrated by Taylor [NAC], Verhoef [NICOT], Hill [TOTC], and Hugenberger's monograph). She leans toward a late, post-Assyrian composition of Nahum without adequate defence against the strong arguments for a 663–612 BCE date marshalled by Timmer (ZECOT), Roberts (OTL), Robertson (NICOT), Patterson (WEC), and Barker (NAC). Throughout, her engagement with scholarship is selective, drawing heavily on feminist and ideological critics while largely ignoring evangelical, Reformed, and moderate critical scholars; a reader relying on O'Brien alone would not know that the overwhelming majority of commentators across the theological spectrum treat Nahum's theology of divine justice as theologically legitimate, read Malachi 2:10–16 as at least partly about literal marriage, and affirm that the prophetic books substantially preserve prophetic speech rather than being editorial fictions. Best used as one voice among many, read alongside Renz (NICOT), Timmer (ZECOT), Boda (NICOT/NIVAC), or Robertson (NICOT) for theological balance.

offers a literary reading with focus on ethical questions, especially issues of gender and violence

Julia O'Brien's AOTC (2004) includes Nahum through Malachi. As with other volumes in this series, this is a popular-level exposition that tends toward the mainline, critical kind of theological perspective. For instance, she can at times consider prophecies to have been written after the fact (e.g. Haggai), and she treats some of the prophetic messages as immoral (e.g. Nahum's use of rape as part of the judgment on Assyria, Malachi's supposed patriarchy). She seems very excited about Habakkuk's questions against God at the beginning of the book, with less attention to his later faith and trust in God. I can't complain about a lack of theological reflection, but it's not always theology sympathetic to the prophet's concerns. O'Brien is often hesitant about text-critical solutions. She includes a special section on the contribution of each book to the overall Book of the Twelve of the minor prophets, but she thinks each individual book is a work of its own, and thus her Nahum commentary focuses on Habakkuk as a book rather than as a piece of the Book of the Twelve. O'Brien and Achtemeier will probably be the main choices for expositions among those who accept more critical views. My impression is that Achtemeier will be the more conservative of the two, while O'Brien will be the more thought-provoking. [Full Review]

Julia O'Brien's AOTC (2004) includes Nahum through Malachi. As with other volumes in this series, this is a popular-level exposition that tends toward the mainline, critical kind of theological perspective. For instance, she can at times consider prophecies to have been written after the fact (e.g. Haggai), and she treats some of the prophetic messages as immoral (e.g. Nahum's use of rape as part of the judgment on Assyria, Malachi's supposed patriarchy). She seems very excited about Habakkuk's questions against God at the beginning of the book, with less attention to his later faith and trust in God. I can't complain about a lack of theological reflection, but it's not always theology sympathetic to the prophet's concerns. O'Brien is often hesitant about text-critical solutions. She includes a special section on the contribution of each book to the overall Book of the Twelve of the minor prophets, but she thinks each individual book is a work of its own, and thus her Nahum commentary focuses on Habakkuk as a book rather than as a piece of the Book of the Twelve. O'Brien and Achtemeier will probably be the main choices for expositions among those who accept more critical views. My impression is that Achtemeier will be the more conservative of the two, while O'Brien will be the more thought-provoking. [Full Review]

Within the rather limited scope of this commentary series that aims at a general readership, Julia OBrien comments on the six prophetical books that contain the second part of the Dodekapropheton. The book opens with a short introduction into the concepts of prophet and prophetic books. Here she clearly states that books are not equal to living persons and that the books are what we have to interpret. Although she has a keen eye for the idea of a historical contextboth of the ancient and the modern readershe wants to overcome the traditional historicizing reading of these texts. I hope to have understood her correctly when I conclude that applying meaning to a text should be based on its reading against the historical background of the final redaction. She construes the historical environment of the original prophe cy as a later-day literary construct. I can only agree with this approach, especially in view of the fact that too many commentaries on prophetical books start with a description of the original context that is, however, always almost deduced from lines and phrases within the prophetical book. This often reminds one of Baron of Mnchhausen, w ho tried to get out of a marsh by pulling himself upward at his hair. Nevertheless, I will never deny that there has been a historical contextand quite often a very bitter onet hat, however, needs to be (re)constructed from data outside the text under consideration. [Full Review]