The Historical Books Of The Bible Second Samuel

"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 stories of Samuel, Saul, and David are among the most memorable in the Old Testament. Yet the lives of these individuals are bound up in the larger story of God's purpose for his people. In this Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, V. Philips Long explores the meaning of the biblical history of Israel's vital transition from a confederation of tribes to nationhood under a king. He shows how attending to the books of Samuel repays its readers richly in terms of literary appreciation, historical knowledge, and theological grounding. The Tyndale Commentaries are designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text says and what it means. The Introduction to each book gives a concise but thorough treatment of its authorship, date, original setting, and purpose. Following a structural Analysis, the Commentary takes the book section by section, drawing out its main themes, and also comments on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Additional Notes provide fuller discussion of particular difficulties. In the new Old Testament volumes, the commentary on each section of the text is structured under three headings: Context, Comment, and Meaning. The goal is to explain the true meaning of the Bible and make its message plain.

This commentary begins with an Introduction, which gives an overview of the issues of date, authorship, sources and so on, but which also outlines more fully than usual the theology of 1 and 2 Samuel, and provides pointers toward its interpretation and contemporary application.

Second Samuel includes some of the most well-known and theologically layered episodes in the Old Testament, such as the Lord's establishment of an eternal covenant with David, David's sin with Bathsheba, and the subsequent account of Absalom's rebellion. In this second part of an ambitious two-volume commentary on the books of Samuel, David Toshio Tsumura elucidates the rich text of 2 Samuel with special attention to literary and textual issues. Tsumura interprets the book in light of the meaning of the original composition, and he provides a fresh new translation based on careful analysis of the Hebrew text.

"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.

In this introduction to the first five books of the Old Testament, Victor Hamilton moves chapter by chapter--rather than verse by verse--through the Pentateuch, examining the content, structure, and theology. Each chapter deals with a major thematic unit of the Pentateuch, and Hamilton provides useful commentary on overarching themes and connections between Old Testament texts. This second edition has been substantially revised and updated. The first edition sold over sixty thousand copies.