This commentary on 1 and 2 Kings demonstrates the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of the Bible for today's church.

"A masterpiece of contemporary Bible translation and commentary."—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Best Books of 1999 Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays.

The Old Testament provides powerful ways of thinking and seeing. Preeminent Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann considers the artistry of 1 and 2 Kings as it mediates between history and faith. Walter Brueggemann has spent many years engaged with the composition and imagination of the Old Testament, pondering the ways of power in church and society, and he makes clear that those issues of in the ancient texts pertain to contemporary times. The chronology of the kings is complex and fractured in detail. Brueggemann reports upon the length of years of rule for each king as given in the text. At the same time, he situates each king according to a critical chronology. While the book proceeds text by text, special focus is placed upon Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, and Josiah as models of faith. Brueggemann provides a useful guide for the reader to maneuver between flat history and absolute faith. Written in commentary form, 1&2 Kings invites the reader to view fresh ways of faithful insight and wisdom. Written by accomplished scholars with all students of Scripture in mind, this innovative new commentary series is designed to make quality Bible study more accessible. Pastors, professors and students of Scripture are discovering that this commentary is a wonderful new tool for enhancing interpretation. Walter Brueggemann served as the William Marcellus McPheddeis Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.

Born out of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of women who Raechel and Amanda have walked alongside as they walk with the Lord, She Reads Truth is the message that will help you understand the place of God's Word in your life.

This latest volume in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture (RCS) series offers biblical commentary from numerous Reformation-era theologians, pastors, and preachers from a variety of theological traditions—Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Radical, and Roman Catholic—on six Old Testament books: 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles.

A companion to the newly revised and expanded second edition of Old Testament Survey, this student workbook features all-new exercises for seminary classroom settings, including map work, fill-in-the-blanks, etc. Professors should note this is all new text that is not connected to the previous edition of the workbook that accompanied the original 1992 edition of Old Testament Survey.

"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.

David Pawson presents a unique overview of both the Old and New Testaments.

Nathan Lovell proposes that 1 and 2 Kings might be read as a work of written history, produced with the explicit purpose of shaping the communal identity of its first readers in the Babylonian exile. By drawing on sociological approaches to the role historiography plays in the construction of political identity, Lovell argues the book of Kings is intended to reconstruct a sense of Israelite identity in the context of these losses, and that the book of Kings moves beyond providing a reason for the exile in Israel's history, and beyond even connecting its exilic audience to that history. The book recalls the past in order to demonstrate what it means to be Israel in the (exilic) present, and to encourage hope for the Israelite nation in the future. After developing a reading strategy for 1–2 Kings that treats the book as a coherent narrative, Lovell examines the construction of Israelite identity within Kings under the headings of covenant, nationhood, land, and rule. In each case he suggests that the narrative of the book creates room for a genuine but temporary expression of Israelite identity in exile: genuine to show that it remains possible for Israel to be Yahweh's people during the exile, but temporary to encourage hope for a future restoration.