This book replaces the thirty-year-old Charles Fensham volume that had been widely used. This new entry is much more geared to scholarly types than the more pastor-friendly earlier work. Most new NICOT volumes lean that direction, but this one seems to especially answer the detailed questions that scholars ask. I imagine scholars would rank it highly while pastors might only marshal information from it that would require them to put it together themselves. There is a place for such works, but make your expectations in that direction.

If you are after introductory issues, you’ll get over 90 detailed pages here. Some subjects will be more illuminating than others, but I can’t think of any omissions. The sections on the text and date cover many ideas with mostly conservative conclusions at until a discussion of the final compilation of the books. The discussion of setting covers some themes and structure clearly in the latest parlance. The final 2/3 of the Introduction covers historical background and is the best work here. With that information you can reconstruct the times with distinct advantage. As I understand it, themes of Second Temple Judaism are a specialty of the author. It shows. I thought it was good except when she put how Ezra and Nehemiah dealt with mixed marriages as harsher than, and perhaps a departure from, the Pentateuch. Could not the Lord for His Own purposes have led them to take a stronger stand during times of the acute stress of a seventy year captivity? Our scholarship can collapse under its own weight if we disconnect it from Whose word it is.

The commentary proper exhibits what we found in the Introduction. Expert scholarship that outranks its theology. The bibliography and copious footnotes show the author’s scholarly prowess. Application is not really in view. Take the mass of quality scholarship and make your own application . Then you will be able to squeeze out all this book has to offer.

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.