The Book of Numbers (New International Commentary on the Old Testament)

Rating:
Summary: Quick Review
Review: Intermediate to advanced level of study from the NICOT series. This is generally highly recommended for the scholarly content, but yet is not "beyond" the student.

Rating:
Summary: Quick Review
Review: Intermediate to advanced level of study from the NICOT series. This is generally highly recommended for the scholarly content, but yet is not "beyond" the student.

Rating:
Summary: Best evangelical commentary on Numbers
Review: This is an excellent book. Ashley is well-informed about what people of differing viewpoints have to say, and this is therefore the most in-depth evangelical commentary on the book of Numbers. He doesn't accept all the conservative positions easily, but he is fairly conservative in the end.

He convincingly argues for the unity of the canonical book and undermines many source-critical "solutions" to some of the problems of interpretation. However, this doesn't mean he thinks the entire book was written by one person or during or immediately after the time of Moses (not least because these books never suggest anything like that). He does think much of it does go back to Moses in some form, and he occasionally gives arguments for this about certain passages. He certainly makes no bones about being an evangelical and seeing scripture as God's word, wholly inspired (and I assume without error in its original form, which we no longer have 100%).

Ashley certainly doesn't constantly focus on theology and ties to the New Testament, but he does do a fair amount of reflection on such matters in almost as much detail as his historical, linguistic, and sociological reflection.

For a more mainstream commentary, the best is Jacob Milgrom's JPS Torah commentary (which is certainly not the old classic liberal viewpoint but has covered new ground, undermining lots of now-old-fashioned views still taught at the undergraduate level), and Ashley had some access to that before revising his manuscript into the final draft. Milgrom's thought influenced Ashley's from his many papers and earlier books also. Gordon Wenham's Tyndale volume is quite good but getting dated and extremely short. R. Dennis Cole's New American Commentary volume isn't as detailed as Ashley's but seems to be at least as good on many matters.