Whose Story is it?
Who Gets to Narrate the World? This is a great question and is the title of a short and stirring book by Robert Webber. It’s subtitled: Contending for the Christian Story in an Age of Rivals. Webber believed this question…
Category Interpretation
Genesis 38
Genesis 38 is one of the most intriguing chapters in the book of Genesis. My own take of how to approach it, especially when it came to preaching the passage, has been to summarise the plot in Genesis 38 so:…
Who decides?
Alister McGrath’s book is titled ‘Christianity’s Dangerous Idea’ (see last post). Here’s why as he explains in his introduction: “The idea that lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century Reformation, which brought Anglicanism and the other Protestant churches into being,…
Jumping over Jericho’s walls
“As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. … He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man named Zacchaeus.” (Luke 18:35, 19:1). I was preaching on Luke 18:35-19:10 recently.…
Paul and Ecclesiastes
“For the creation was subjected to futility…” (Romans 8:20) The Greek word, mataioteti, translated futility in the ESV of Romans 8:20, has been much discussed by commentators. The noun only occurs in two other places in the New Testament (Ephesians 4:17,…
Interpreting 2 Samuel 13:1-22
“But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad, for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had violated his sister Tamar.” (2 Samuel 13:22 ESV). I was a little surprised to come across a reference to a Cotterell and Turner’s book…
Firth on Samuel
The cover up – 2 Samuel 11. David Firth has written quite a long commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel in the Apollos series. I haven’t found the commentary style and format the easiest to work with though there are…
A Surprising Omission
Dale Ralph Davis made my ‘Top 5 commentaries on 2 Samuel‘. He did so easily. It’s a superb commentary. There is a quote of Alec Motyer on the front cover of my edition which captures my sentiments: ‘I have lost…
Beware congealing!
I’ve been reading the PG Wodehouse novel ‘A Pelican at Blandings’. I’ve read it before but I do so enjoy savouring a Blandings saga before bed. The other night I came across this lovely description concerning Lord Emsworth who has…