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In its wanton celebration of violence, the book of Nahum poses ethical challenges to the modern reader. O'Brien offers the first full-scale engagement with this dimension of the book, exploring the ways in which the artfulness of its poetry serves the book's violent ideology, highlighting how its rhetoric attempts to render the Other fit for annihilation. She then reads from feminist, intertextual and deconstructionist angles and uncovers the destabilizing function of the book's aesthetics. Finally, she demonstrates how mining Nahum's ambiguities and tensions can contribute to an ethical response to its violence.
Robertson's study of the Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah is a contribution to The New International Commentalry on the Old Testament, a commentary which strives to achieve a balance between technical information and homiletic-devotional interpretation. The commentary proper is based on the author's own translation of the Hebrew text.
"The Anchor Yale Bible is a fresh approach to the world's greatest classic. Its object is to make the Bible accessible to the modern reader; its method is to arrive at the meaning of biblical literature through exact translation and extended exposition, and to reconstruct the ancient setting of the biblical story, as well as the circumstances of its transcription and the characteristics of its transcribers ... [It] is a project of international and interfaith scope: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars from many countries contribute individual volumes ... [and] is an effort to make available all the significant historical and linguistic knowledge which bears on the interpretation of the biblical record ... [It] is aimed at the general reader with no special formal training in biblical studies, yet it is written with the most exacting standards of scholarship, reflecting the highest technical accomplishment"--Vol. 1, p. [ii].
Elizabeth Achtemeier examines the often-neglected Minor Prophets and explains them as they reflect the church at worship and at work. She sets the Minor Prophets in their canonical context emphasizing the relationship between the message of these prophets and the New Testament. Unique in the use of brief quotations from great preachers' sermons on the prophets, Nahum-Malachi is enriched with the vast insightful store of homiletical interpretation available today. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.
In this commentary an attempt is made to prove that the book of Nahum was written in Jerusalem, ca. 660 BCE, by a talented, faithful royal scribe. He used the pseudonym Nahum as an indication of his purpose: to encourage the people of Judah groaning under the tyranny of the Assyrians. He took his inspiration from the earlier prophetics of Isaiah and from Psalms, which he probably regularly heard or sang in the temple. He also used his familiarity with the Assyrian literature, especialy with the texts of vassal treaties and royal annals, to express in fitting words the announcement of the downfall of the Assyrian empire symbolized by its capital Niniveh.After the fulfilment of this prediction in 612 BCE the book of Nahum must have become very popular, as it proved clear example of true prophecy. It had much influence upon Habakuk and exilic prophets like the Second Isaiah and Jeremiah, who interpreted its message in the new situation of the Babylonian opprression. Traces of this influence are also found in the literature of the community of Qumran and in the NT.
Nahum-Malachi, the last six books of the Christian Old Testament, span the period from the end of the Assyrian empire in the 7th century BCE to the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the emergence of Persia in the 5th century BCE. But these books also have a collective identity as the latter half of the Book of the Twelve-the ancient Jewish and Christian designation for the so-called "minor" prophets. This commentary maintains a balance between reading each of these six books in its own historical and social setting and considering the interrelationships and canonical functions of these books within the Book of the Twelve as a whole. Jesus ben Sirach wrote that "the Twelve Prophets . . . comforted the people of Jacob and delivered them with confident hope" (Sir 49:10). This commentary, following ben Sirach, proposes that the theme of the Book of the Twelve is a comforting word of hope and deliverance.
The distinctiveness of this commentary lies in its consistent rotation between synchronic and diachronic views. This double perspective is directed toward the three prophetic books as a single entity, toward each individual book, and toward the interpretation of each pericope. The result is a sophisticated picture, on the one hand of the structure and intention of the texts in their final form, and on the other hand of their compositional history - from the second half of the 7th century to the late Old Testament period. Each exegetical section opens with a precise, text-critically supported translation and finishes with a synthesis that attempts to make note of the lasting insights from each text and the most important results of the analysis.
An excellent exegetical commentary. Available in Libronix format www.bible.org
The author of Twelve Prophets, Volume 1 completes his study with a commentary on Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, who foretold the birth of the Messiah; Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, prophets who spoke for God in the last days of the Kingdom of Judah; and Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, whose messages were directed to those reforming the community of God's people after the Babylonian Exile. Individuals who proclaimed different messages according to the times in which they lived, these prophets nevertheless have in common the task of speaking the Word of God to the people of God. Through his insightful commentary, Peter C. Craigie shows the persistent meaning of this Word through the ages. Carrying forward brilliantly the pattern established by Barclay's New Testament series, the Daily Study Bible has been extended to cover the entire Old Testament as well. Invaluable for individual devotional study, for group discussion, and for classroom use, the Daily Study Bible provides a useful, reliable, and eminently readable way to discover what the Scriptures were saying then and what God is saying today.