Deuteronomy

Thompson's Deuteronomy (Belief series, WJK, 2014) is a readable pastoral essay for church audiences, but it has significant weaknesses that limit its usefulness as a scholarly commentary. As a systematic theologian rather than an OT specialist, Thompson makes recurring factual errors — misdating the end of the Babylonian exile (stating "540 BCE" rather than the standard 539/538 BCE), overstating the current consensus behind Wellhausen's four-source theory, and claiming Deuteronomy is "the only book of the Pentateuch" with monotheistic claims. Her logic is inconsistently applied: she mounts a sustained argument against Marcionite separation of the OT and NT gods, yet persistently frames OT divine violence as morally troubling in ways she never applies to NT judgement texts, effectively reproducing the emotional valence she formally rejects. Most seriously for a Christian theological commentary, she concedes that "it is difficult to mount a defense against" David Blumenthal's characterisation of God as "abusive," approvingly cites Martin Buber's "This is no God that I know" in response to the Amalek command, and flatly describes "the God of the Bible in its entirety" as "irreducibly… destructive toward God's own creation" — language that goes beyond acknowledging textual tension and into an evaluative indictment of the divine character. She also politicises the "choose life" passage (30:19) by framing it primarily as a counter to pro-life usage, and she endorses Muslim claims on Deuteronomy 18:18 without critical theological evaluation. Readers wanting serious engagement with Deuteronomy's theology would be better served by Block (NIVAC), McConville (ApOTC), or even the more critical Miller (Interpretation).