Reviews of Commentaries on Exodus

It took a long time but I finally got done with teaching my girls through the entire book of Exodus as part of our home Bible study!

I thought it be a good idea to review the Bible commentaries on Exodus that I found helpful!

5 out of 5

Purchase: Westminster | Amazon

Looking for a devotional commentary on Exodus?  I highly recommend this one by Philip Graham Ryken!  It is a massive work (1247 pages!) but don’t let the size scare you; general Christian readers and also Bible teachers will benefit from this book by an esteemed pastor.  The book is an exceptional expositional commentary that is something in the middle between a devotional and an exegetical technical commentary and yet sometimes some of the insights in this book point out great points from the biblical texts that other technical commentaries might have missed.  I recommend this commentary as personal devotional or resources for Bible study leaders, Sunday school teachers and preachers and pastors.

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Review: Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology

Jeffrey Jay Niehaus. Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, March 13, 2008. 208 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Have you ever wonder how the Ancient Near East contribute towards our understanding of the Bible?  There’s of course books out there that have used Ancient Near East primary sources to question the veracity of the Bible and biblical doctrines so I understand when Christians are cautious with books on this topic.  This book not only still hold a high view of the Bible but I think this book makes a unique contribution in bringing the fruit of Ancient Near East research and unified it as one coherent Biblical theology rather than various assorted unrelated fact.  This book impressed me beyond my expectation and I’m glad a fellow blogger and friend Mandy Sweigart recommended me to read this!

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Review: Exegetical Gems from Biblical Hebrew

 

H.H. Hardy II. Exegetical Gems from Biblical Hebrew. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, July 16th 2019. 224 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

The publisher have said of this book that it is “perfect for students looking to apply their Hebrew and for past students who wish to review the essentials of Hebrew grammar.”   But before you dismiss that this book is something you can overlook because you don’t know Biblical Hebrew consider the possibility that this makes a great gift (Birthday, graduation, Christmas, etc) for someone you know in seminary, ministry and those who teach God’s Word and want to learn Hebrew or do use Hebrew regularly for teaching and preaching!

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Review: Best Bible Books: New Testament Resources

John Glynn. Best Bible Books: New Testament Resources.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, April 24th 2018. 336 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

This book is supposed to be the eleventh update of the author John Glynn’s helpful Commentary and Reference Survey: A Comprehensive Guide to Biblical and Theological Resources which is a book surveying the various technical and semitechnical written resources on the Bible and the study of the Bible.  However this latest update has significant changes with the most obvious being the work is now divided into two separate books with one on the Old Testament (forthcoming) and one on the New Testament (this present volume).  I thought this major update is needed since the last edition was published eleven years ago.  For serious students of Scripture (with or without the skill of Greek and Hebrew) I highly recommend this book.

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Dr. Bill Barrick’s Seminary Lectures: The Book of Genesis

Here’s a wonderful resource that’s worth bookmarking!  The Old Testament professor at The Master’s Seminary has taught in the past on the book of Genesis.  Fortunately for all of us his lectures are online for free!

Here are the videos:

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Review: A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament

Note: If your pastor prepares his sermon from the Greek New Testament and you want a recommendation of what to get him for Christmas, I recommend this work.

Charles Lee Irons. A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, July 27th 2016.  608 pp.

This is a great work for reference for preachers and students of the Greek New Testament.  The book examines the Greek New Testament text at the level of syntactical observations and when appropriate several possible interpretations.  The author Charles Lee Irons wrote this work with the intent of going beyond merely parsing Greek verbs and declining Greek nouns but at the stage of interpretation involving phrases, clauses and sentences.  This work is helpful for those who want a single volume providing this kind of observation from the Greek text.  Why is this important?  As Irons wrote in the introduction, “Analysis of syntax often entails making judgments about the various uses of a certain grammatical form, giving rise to a particular meaning in that context” (9).

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Apologetics Sermon Illustration #38: Whoppers and Bible Contradictions

GO TO PART 37

Point: Sometimes what is found in the skeptics’ list of Bible contradictions are not contradictions but are what appears to be contradictions because the skeptic hasn’t account for the fact that words can have more than one meaning.  How should one respond when a skeptic’s retort back is that this is a cop-out or they throw the objection that it is too hard to find out the true meaning of a word is in the Bible?

Picture: My counter question would be: Aren’t there examples where words can mean more than one thing even in the natural realm in which we can find out what the usage of the word means?  Of course there is.  Think of the case of whoppers.

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Bible Contradiction? How did David kill Goliath? And did he killed him twice?

This post is probably more technical than some of the other responses we wrote answering alleged Bible contradiction but I think it is helpful in demonstrating how a working knowledge of the original language of Scripture is helpful and important.

Today’s post will tackle the question that the Skeptic Annotated Bible pose: “How did David kill Goliath?”

Here’s the two answer they pointed out in which their point is that there is a contradiction:

With a sling only.

(“There was no sword in the had of David.”)

And David put his hand into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead. And the stone sank into his forehead, so that he fell on his face to the ground. 50 Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him; but there was no sword in David’s hand. (1 Samuel 17:49-50)

He cut off his head with a sword.

Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. (1 Samuel 17:51)

(Note: Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible.  What is in bold is the emphasis by the skeptic webpage.)

Also the website also asked “Or did he kill him twice?”

Let’s take a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

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Chance for Giveaway of 3-volume Commentary on the Psalms by Allen Ross

This commentary series put out by Kregel Academic is amazing.  Last year I reviewed another commentary in this series on Exodus by Duane A. Garrett and I’ve thumb through volume one of this particular three volume series on the Psalms by Allen Ross and I’ve been blessed by the contents in them.

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Greek Exegesis Course Videos with Dr. Farnell

Want to proceed beyond Greek Grammar and into Greek exegesis?

Here’s Dr. Farnell’s lectures on Greek Exegesis.

For Pastors who have taken Greek and want to refresh your Greek this is also helpful.

There’s 14 videos in total.

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Review: Tough Questions About God and His Actions in the Old Testament

Walter Kaiser. Tough Questions About God and His Actions in the Old Testament.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, October, 1^st, 2015. 176 pp.

I was first introduced to the author when I was in seminary and I found his books immensely helpful.  So when I saw that Walter Kaiser has written a book on tough questions concerning God in the Old Testament I knew I had to read it.  Over the years there has been a few works concerning the difficulties of the Old Testament written by Christian apologists but this one really got my attention since Kaiser is an Old Testament scholar and a specialist in the field for decades.

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Review: A Commentary on Exodus by Duane A. Garrett

Duane A. Garrett. A Commentary on Exodus.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, November, 1^st, 2014. 741 pp.

I must begin with a bit of a personal note.  Many years ago when I was a young Christian I had used the author’s commentary on Hosea and Joel that was my first real exposure to an exegetical commentary.  I was blown away.  I was likewise blown away with Duane Garrett’s recent commentary on Exodus.  Of course this time around I am much older and I felt I was able to benefit more from Garrett exegetical insights than when I was a young college student reading through Hosea and Joel.  Garrett has done an excellent job with his Exodus commentary.

The Introduction was well over a hundred page.  I appreciated Garrett’s point that many commentators on Exodus have neglected the important contribution of Egyptology and one sees Garrett’s tremendous effort in bringing up-to-date scholarship from Egyptology to bear concerning Introductory matters of the book of Exodus.  In particular I thought his discussion of anything chronological stood out, especially with the dating of the events of Exodus.  It is incredibly detailed: He considers the difficulties of Egyptian method of counting how many days are to be in a year, when various Pharaohs ruled and archaeological findings in the area of Canaan as he weighs the pros and cons of various arguments for the late or early dating of the book.  I think it is worth getting the book for the Introduction alone.  While he does not come to a fixed conclusion of when the events of Exodus takes place nevertheless his interaction of the arguments of the various views is a good summary of the various views.

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Were Early Christians Communists? Our 3 Part Series

I didn’t plan to write this three part series on the question “Were Early Christians Communists?”  It was originally in response to someone online and it just kind of happened as I thought about it more I ended up writing more.

I think it would be good to have one posts that links the series.  Here are the links to the three posts:

Were Early Christians Communists? Part 1: Acts 5

Were Early Christians Communists? Part 2: The Semantic of Communism

Were Early Christians Communists? Part 3: Matthew 19:21 and Luke 14:33 in Context

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Goal: Bible Commentary Review Project

It’s my goal that in the next nine years I would read at least one commentary for every book in the Bible–so I can recommend a good commentary for the books in the Bible.

It is partly as my own devotional reading through the Scriptures and partly because of being asked what good commentaries I’ve read that I would recommend for certain books.  Since I realized I need to read more Bible commentaries, I thought this might be a good project on Veritas Domain.

Sometime this week I’ll post up a page that list out what has already been done.  I will be reviewing expository and exegetical commentaries.

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Exposition of Jonah Part 10: JONAH AND THE REST OF THE BIBLE

For Exposition of Jonah Part 9 click HERE

Selected Scriptures

Establish the need: When you read a book in the Bible do you think of how it fits with the rest of Bible?  Does other books in the Bible fill in more details about Jonah itself, and something important in our lives as a result of it?

We will look at how Jonah relates to the rest of the Bible, and bring out four lessons for our lives today as a result of it.

 (1) A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is be careful of using God’s truth in the wrong way (Exodus 34:6-7; Jonah 4:2)

 (2) A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is realize Nineveh really repented and so should we (Matthew 12:38-41)

 (3) A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is to realize that we need to respond to one’s greater than Jonah that’s here (Matthew 12:41b; Matthew 8:23-27)

 I. A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is be careful of using God’s truth in the wrong way (Exodus 34:6-7; Jonah 4:2)

Point: Jonah knew His Bible well..but did not use these truths to do the right thing but do the wrong thing instead.

Passage:

i.      “He prayed to the Lord and said, “Please Lord, was not this ^[a]what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore ^[b]in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”(Jonah 4:2)

ii.      “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and ^[a]truth; ⁷ who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

Proof

i.      How did Jonah know these five attributes about God?

1. Experienced it in being spared himself in Jonah 2.
2. But note that Jonah in 4:2 is a complaint that Jonah had about God before Jonah 2, when he was back home.
3. Q: How did Jonah know that God was all these things?

A: Exodus 34:6-7.

ii.      Four attributes of God are mentioned in Exodus 34:6-7.

iii.      Last one, “one who relents concerning calamity” is derived from the context of Exodus 34:6-7 earlier in Exodus 33 of Israel’s sin bringing calamity (v. 1-3), Moses petition (v.12-23) and favor shown (Exodus 34:1-5).

Practice

i.      Watch out for these things

1. Do you get angry with someone but then use something else (theological excuse) to cover it up?
2. (Divorce passage in 1 Corinthians 7:12-15 and how people can make their spouse life so miserable that they want to divorce them)
3. You just use theology to say you are better than someone.
4. You don’t want to share the gospel to someone so that they can go to hell.
5. Say “obey me” because I have power for power sake.

ii.      Guard yourself from doing this by:

1. Being accountable to others.
2. Also, study more of the Bible’s context and larger context.

 

II. A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is realize Nineveh really repented and so should we (Matthew 12:38-41)

Point: Don’t just think about Nineveh: Think about yourself and your soul if you have not trusted in Jesus Christ yet.

Passage: ^“38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a ^[ak]sign from You.” ³⁹ But He answered and said to them, “ An evil and adulterous generation craves for a ^[al]sign; and yet no ^[am]sign will be given to it but the ^[an]sign of Jonah the prophet; ⁴⁰ for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹  The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”(Matthew 12:38-41)

Proof

i.      Have you been hearing this series on Jonah just for intellectual knowledge?  Well Jesus makes it very personal and applied it to his hearers.

ii.      The scribes and Phariees asked for a sign (v.38), but recall earlier they are suppressing the evidence even to the point of saying He’s satanic (Matthew 12:22-24)

iii.      Thus Jesus’ response with condemnation in v.39.

iv.      Jesus’ sign was prophecy (v.40).

v.      Jesus revealed that Nineveh repented and brought up the fact that that generation will condemn the current generation.

vi.      Jesus is even greater and we need to respond appropriately!

Practice

i.      What have you done with Jesus in your life?

ii.      Will you those that Nineveh condemn also as well for not repenting and turning to Jesus?

 

III. A lesson for us in seeing Jonah as it relates to the rest of the Bible is to realize that we need to respond to one’s greater than Jonah that’s here (Matthew 12:41b; Matthew 8:23-27)

Point: We often read our Bible and make heroes into the character we read about.  I think Jonah it’s hard to do that.  Moreover I think Jonah points to Jesus—in a negative contrast kind of way.

Passage:

i.      ^“41  The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”(Matthew 12:41)

ii.      “When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. ²⁴ And behold, there arose ^[a]a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. ²⁵ And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “ Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” ²⁶ He *said to them, “Why are you ^[b]afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and ^[c]it became perfectly calm. ²⁷ The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”(Matthew 8:23-27)

Proof

i.      Note end of Matthew 12:41, “; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

1. Of course, this is a reference to Jesus.
2. Of course to the Scribes and Pharisees they do not believe it.
3. But for Jesus’ disciples these words must have meant something and probably echo an earlier event before we see what is going on here: Matthew 8:23-27.

ii.      The parallel with Jonah and Jesus:

1. Both episodes involve a man of God.
2. Both episodes involve being in a vessel: “When He got into the boat” (Matthew 8:23a)
3. Both episodes involve a vessel sailing the opposite direction (Youngblood, Location 1724).
4. Both episodes involve a man of God that has others being in the vessel with him as well: “His disciples followed Him.” (Matthew 8:23b)
5. Both episodes involves being at sea. “on the sea” (Matthew 8:24a)
6. Both episodes involve a “big storm”: “And behold, there arose ^[a]a great storm on the sea,” (Matthew 8:24a)
7. Both episodes involve the vessel being threatened: “so that the boat was being covered with the waves,” (Matthew 8:24b)
8. Both episodes involve the man of God sleeping during the storm: “but Jesus Himself was asleep.” (Matthew 8:24c)
9. Both episodes involve the man of God being waken up: “but Jesus Himself was asleep.” (Matthew 8:25)
10. Both episodes involve terrified men: “And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “ Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” (Matthew 8:25)
11. Both episodes involve the storm miraculously stopped: “He *said to them, “Why are you ^[b]afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and ^[c]it became perfectly calm.” (Matthew 8:26)
12. Both episodes involve the response of fear and awe: “The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” (Matthew 8:27)

iii.      But what is the differences between Jesus and Jonah?  A Great difference!

Practice

i.      Do you respond in awe of God?

ii.      Does your life of holiness reflect it?

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