In this close reading of a text central to the story of David, the author, using the tools of linguistic pragmatics and poetics, exposes the text's promotion of a prophetic-based ideology, through a polemical rhetoric that polarizes David and Yahweh around the opposed notions of king (melek) and leader (nagid). He then goes on to analyse the context, in ancient Near Eastern royal ideology and in Samuel, for how the text develops this opposition, and finally reflects on its promulgation of the supreme mediacy of the prophetic word.

Compares perspectives from critical methodologies in Old Testament study with perspectives from the history of interpretation of key Old Testament political texts

Scholars studying the ANE have noticed that Canaanite kings ruled as a representative of their god and served in a priestly role. Yahweh allows Israel to have a king “like all the nations” (Deut 17:14), but he shapes the monarchy according to his covenant. A key question remains, does God’s allowance for a king “like all the nations” include a king-priest model? This study presents a synchronic view of the king as a priest within the MT of Samuel, analyzing the motif and considering how the narrator heightens the hope for the coming anointed one, whom the narrator describes as both king (1 Sam 2:10) and priest (2:35–36). This study will argue that, from the monarchy’s inception, Yahweh considered Israel’s kingship a sacral task. My study examined the king as a priest through a synchronic literary-theological approach.

A study of the growth of Joshua and Judges illustrates how the theme of divine anger has been used differently, according to different historical and social settings. In the deuteronomistic texts the main reason for God's anger is idolatry, which symbolizes a totally negative attitude to everything that God has done or given to the Israelites. This theology of anger is deeply bound to experiences of national catastrophes or threats of crises, and reflects the theological enigma of the exile. A century later, post-deuteronomistic theology gives a wholly different view: the anger of God becomes an instrument of the power struggles between the Israelite parties, or is used for protecting existing leadership.

The widely heralded New American Commentary series continues with this second volume on the Old Testament book of Isaiah, detailing God's intimacy and grandeur.

This research is an investigation into the charismatic leadership of Saul, David, and Solomon. Regarding methodology the study is a synchronic reading and is keen to demonstrate the theology explicit or implicit in the text. This study assumes that charismatic leaders emerge in crisis situations and in order to resolve the crisis by the charisma granted by God. In regard to Saul, the book argues that Saul proved himself a charismatic leader as long as acting resolutely and independently from Samuel, his mentor. He failed, however, because in Samuel's shadow he could not establish himself as a charismatic leader. David was successful because of his autonomy and resolution. Also, he was a successful charismatic leader as long as he remained independent. King David, however, was gradually sidelined by Joab. Another major theme of the David narrative is the clash between the concepts of charismatic military leadership and that of oriental kingship. David's military leadership and the charisma related to it are constantly challenged by the concept of oriental kingship. Although at his emergence he had lacked charisma, Solomon wisely chose the leadership skills needed to lead Israel. Attention is, however, drawn to the tensions between Solomon's leadership benefiting Israel and the royal pretension manifest in royal projects. The relationship of the new charismatic leader with the old leader is scrutinized: how the new leader is appointed, how he emerges, how the old persists--in short the transition and succession in leadership. An evaluation of the activity of the charismatic follows; could he resolve the crisis from which he emerged and for which he was granted God's spirit? To what extent were these leaders charismatic?

Much of the drama, theological paradox, and interpretive interest in the Book of Samuel derives from instances of God's violence in the story. The beginnings of Israel's monarchy are interwoven with God's violent rejection of the houses of Eli and of Saul, deaths connected to the Ark of the Covenant, and the outworking of divine retribution after David's violent appropriation of Bathsheba as his wife. Whilst divine violence may act as a deterrent for violent transgression, it can also be used as a model or justification for human violence, whether in the early monarchic rule of Ancient Israel, or in crises of our contemporary age. In Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel, Rachelle Gilmour explores these narratives of divine violence from ethical, literary, and political perspectives, in dialogue with the thought of Immanuel Kant, Martha Nussbaum and Walter Benjamin. She addresses such questions as: Is the God of Samuel a capricious God with a troubling dark side? Is punishment for sin the only justifiable violence in these narratives? Why does God continue to punish those already declared forgiven? What is the role of God's emotions in acts of divine violence? In what political contexts might narratives of divine violence against God's own kings, and God's own people have arisen? The result is a fresh commentary on the dynamics of transgression, punishment, and their upheavals in the book of Samuel. Gilmour offers a sensitive portrayal of God's literary characterization, with a focus on divine emotion and its effects. By identifying possible political contexts in which the narratives arose, God's violence is further illumined through its relation to human violence, northern and southern monarchic ideology, and Judah's experience of the Babylonian exile.

Servant leadership has been broadly and enthusiastically embraced by Christians as a model of leadership marked by humility and modeled by Jesus. But behind that attractive veneer is an approach to leadership that is problematic theologically and anemic biblically with humanistic goals and assumptions that are derived more from secular theory than biblical research. Careful examination of the servant metaphor in Scripture reveals that a leader is not primarily called to be a servant after all, but rather a slave who is obedient and ultimately accountable to God as his or her Master. This provocative picture conveys a much richer and more demanding model of leadership than servanthood when understood within its cultural context. Slaves of the Most High God provides a rigorous exegetical, historical, and theological analysis of the slave metaphor in Luke-Acts. The pattern of Christ’s slave leadership in Luke and the practice of slave leadership in the early church in Acts outline a paradigm of a leader who is in authority and under authority, redeemed by God to serve his people. The author proposes a countercultural model of slave leadership outlining seven practical principles drawn from the metaphor of slavery and shaped by personal pastoral experience.

Commentators are often disturbed by the presence of various speakers in the three poems of Lamentations 1 and 2, and Isaiah 51.9-52.2, the change of speakers being thought to disrupt the flow of ideas. This study shows that a close reading of all three poems in the light of their mourning ceremony setting displays a clear and consistent flow of thought. Purported cases of 'disruption' now fit into their present context as moments in which different mourners voice their pains and their questions aloud, and bring their incomprehensible sufferings to Yahweh their God and the creator of all.

This work employs an eclectic mix of structuralist and post-structuralist theories in a doomed attempt to discover the symbolic logic at work in Zechariah 1-8's surreal narrative world. Lengthy analyses of Zechariah's intra- and intertextual logic, or lack thereof, are presented. It is finally concluded that Zechariah lacks a concrete symbolic logic, defies grammatical conventions and is 'unreadable' as it stands-and always was this way. One suggestion is that it was the intent of the author, conceived of in a postmodern way, to produce such a work. It is finally concluded that the 'post-prophetic' age of Hebrew literature has much in common with the postmodern.