Deuteronomy.A Commentary.By Jack R. Lundbom. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. ISBN 78-0-8028-2614-5.xxx and 1034 Pages. Paper.$80.
This massive volume gives great attention to a fresh translation, notes on rhetorical style (a specialty of the author, see especially pp. 21-25, but also throughout the commentary), exegetical notes on individual verses, and always a section on message and audience, that is, attention to theological questions. While Hebrew quotations appear on the vast majority of pages, readers restricted to English will not be handicapped in reading this volume. The English translation of the biblical text is an attempt to help the reader get a feel for the language, grammar, and style of the original, and Lundbom makes no attempt at achieving dynamic equivalence in his translation.
Lundbom is best known in the scholarly world for his three-volume commentary on Jeremiah in the Anchor Bible Commentary series, and the style and methodology of those volumes are repeated here. This commentatorhas read widely, as his fifty-seven page bibliography indicates. The only major name I missed was LotharPerlitt, who was writing the monumental commentary on Deuteronomy in the BiblischerKommentar series before his recent death. Lundbom has his favorite authors: David Daube, S. R. Driver, David Noel Freedman, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Jeffrey H. Tigay, and Moshe Weinfeld. Also cited, but not as much as I would have expected, are Georg Braulik and Norbert Lohfink, two of the leading Deuteronomy specialists in Germany today.
Since the early nineteenth century, Deuteronomy has been associated with the book of the law discovered by Josiah in 2 Kings 22:8. Lundbom follows in large part this hypothesis but with his own unique take on it. He holds the book that Josiah found not to be an early edition of Deuteronomy 5-28, the majority opinion, but rather he finds the book of the law to be the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, a passage responsible in his opinion for the indictment that the prophet Huldah issued against Israel (2 Kgs 22:16-17). The first edition of Deuteronomy in Lundbom’s opinion embraced Deuteronomy 1-28, which he believes was written in Judah despite containing many northern traditions. While most scholars associate this book with the late seventh century.Lundbom thinks it may go back as far as Jehoshaphat in the ninth century or Hezekiah in the eighth century. Lundbom also follows Chronicles in dating the beginning of Josiah’s reform to 628 B.C.E. All of these points are extensively defended, but they all go against the majority opinion—that will therefore have to be reconsidered.
Theological concepts of major importance occur in Deuteronomy, such as covenant, covenant obligations, Yahweh as a God of love, the election of Israel, the gift of the land, and Holy War, and all are given extensive attention. Lundbom recognizes that Holy War creates many theological problems, especially when some of its most offensive features are commanded by Yahweh. He sets Holy War, however,over against the New Testament and the Christian just war tradition, and adds, strangely in my judgment: “Needless to say, the Jewish Holocaust of the twentieth century has been condemned by virtually everyone” (p. 67; cf. similarly, p. 333). It’s not at all clear to me what the Holocaust/Shoah has to do with Holy War. In discussing ch. 20, dealing extensively with Holy War, Lundbom observes: “So far as Canaanite cities are concerned, Yahweh will give them over to Israel, after which the entire populations are to be devoted to Yahweh. This means killing everything that breathes” (p. 590).After citing various atrocities by Assyrians, Arameans, and Ammonites, he observes: “Moses’ policy was a more enlightened one.”
One cannot write a thousand page book and expect every reader to agree with you one hundred percent. In countless passages, however, readers will find clear, helpful, and well-researched remarks that will deepen their understanding of this reform document that was highly formative of the Old Testament, and deeply influential in the New Testament as well.
Ralph W. Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago