Handbook on the Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Minor Prophets

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Summary: The words of the prophets
Review: Like the other books in this series, 'Handbook on the Prophets' is a highly useful and accessible text. Baker Book House also published 'Handbook on the Pentateuch' many years ago, which has become a widely read book, and 'Handbook on the Historical Books' just a few years ago. Chisholm's book is a welcome part of this collection.

This is not a verse by verse commentary on the prophetic books of the Hebrew scripture. Rather, this is a more general commentary that looks as pericopes (logical blocks of text that flow together) as units. Each chapter (or, in the case of the minor prophets, sub-chapter) has an introduction that gives the basic historical and social background, pertinent linguistic and literary information, and general structural and contextual themes.

The longest chapter, as befits its subject among the prophets, is on Isaiah. This gives a good indication of the kind of commentary Chisholm produces. In the discussion on the authorship of Isaiah, he puts forward the theory that the author of 'First Isaiah' (Isaiah 1-39) is different from the author of 'Second Isaiah' (Isaiah 40-66); perhaps there is even an 'Third Isaiah' (Isaiah 56-66) distinct from the other two. However, Chisholm prefers the more traditional idea that there is but one author of Isaiah. Rather than dealing with the multiple-author theory, he rather sets it forward as a scholarly possibility, but concentrates his writing on the single-author text. From this, one can see from this that Chisholm's interpretative framework is a more traditional and conservative one, but not one that does excludes alternatives.

One of the strengths of this text lies in the bibliographies -- this commentary is not a book by scholars for scholars, but does not ignore that consideration. After each section there are bibliographies of commentaries and of recent studies. Chisholm tends to include works published after the 1980s, so this is a good snapshot of work done in the past decade.

This book is really aimed for the working minister, the individual and group-studying bible reader, and perhaps undergraduate students. It avoids the most advanced and technical language that tends to be the exclusive province of professional scholars and graduate students, yet it does not condescend or lack for insight because of this.