Though the books of Ezra and Nehemiah have sometimes been neglected in Old Testament scholarship, this NBST volume focuses on Ezra-Nehemiah as a literary unit that tells God's grand story of saving activity, exploring Ezra-Nehemiah's interest in the redeemed community and how to be a godly participant in God's story of the redemption and restoration of his people.

In the biblical canon, two books lack any explicit reference to the name of God: Song of Songs and Esther. What is the nature of God as revealed in texts that don't use his name? Exploring the often overlooked theological connections between these two Old Testament books, Chloe T. Sun takes on the challenges of God's absence and explores how we think of God when he is perceived to be silent.

What does it mean to provide leadership for the church in an increasingly secular context? Analyzing the phenomenon of secularization in the West and charting common Christian responses, this indispensable resource from Gordon Smith discusses the competencies and capacities essential for cultivating distinctively Christian leadership today.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century found theological significance in Old Testament narratives such as Ruth's response to her mother-in-law Naomi. In this volume of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, N. Scott Amos guides readers through a wealth of early modern commentary on the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

Christians cannot ignore the intersection of religion and violence. In our own Scriptures, war texts that appear to approve of genocidal killings and war rape raise hard questions about biblical ethics and the character of God. Have we missed something in our traditional readings? Identifying a spectrum of views on biblical war texts, Webb and Oeste pursue a middle path using a hermeneutic of incremental, redemptive-movement ethics.

The church fathers, as they did in earlier books dealing with Israel's history from the time of Joshua to the united monarchy, found ample material for typological and moral interpretation in 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. This ACCS volume includes comment from Greek, Latin, and Syriac theologians, some of which is available in English for the first time.

The early church fathers readily found parallels, or types, in the narratives of the historical books that illumined the New Testament. This ACCS volume features a rich treasure trove of ancient wisdom, including homilies of Origen, commentaries from Gregory of Nazianzus and Bede the Venerable, and question-and-answer works from Augustine, Theodoret of Cyr, and Bede.

The book of Judges presents Israel’s need for deliverance and God’s use of flawed leaders to guide his chosen people through a dark period of their history. The book of Ruth tells a smaller story within this narrative, showing God quietly at work in the lives of a few individuals. This replacement Tyndale commentary places each book in its historical and canonical context, examines key theological themes, and addresses issues facing readers today.