Reviews for A Son To Me

The average rating for A Son To Me based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-01 00:00:00 Paula Graham It's tough to review commentaries by Peter Leithart, as I find them simultaneously so helpful and so unnerving. On the one hand, this is a very stimulating book, and gave me lots of food for thought in terms of the meaning and message of 1-2 Samuel. Leithart does a number of things well. He's good at reading OT narrative as story. He's very good at tracing story arcs across the whole of OT books: where so much OT narrative preaching tends toward the atomistic, with little concern for the message of the whole, Leithart sees the big picture. He's often stimulating on structure, he notices important details, he has good things to say on typology, he makes good connections with the rest of the OT. The particularly striking idea at the heart of this commentary is that the rise and fall of David is described so as to make it clear that the King is a new Israel, a representative of the nation. I thought that was persuasive. But there were lots of other great insights too. But the trouble is that he isn't safe. He isn't safe exegetically. His exegetical maximalism is often fruitful, sometimes speculative, occasionally off the wall. With the corrobaration of other Adamic connections, I'm willing to believe that Goliath's scaly armour is meant to evoke the serpent of Genesis 3; in the context of more solid parallels, I'm intrigued by the fact that Nabal's name is Laban backwards; I draw the line at his biblical-theology of lentils in 2 Samuel 23. Neither is he entirely safe hermeneutically. He has a bit of a tendency towards the character study. There isn't much by way of application in this commentary, but lots of the application there is is about applying David's example to Christian leaders. It's not that many of his comments here are entirely illegitimate - it's just I'm not sure he strikes the right balance. For a typological reading of Samuel, much of his application is surprisingly, well, untypological. And he isn't safe theologically either. Whether it's his take on God the trickster, or his comments on justification, he's very happy to subvert traditional Christian teaching, without taking the time to plug it into a wider framework. Sometimes he might have a point, but he isn't very responsible. And responsibility is probably the thing. Leithart's great strength is his willingness to try ideas on for size. So many commentaries on narrative are frankly quite dull - bad at telling stories, bad at understanding them, and reductionistic on meaning. Leithart is never dull. But his great weakness is his willingness to try ideas on for size. He's very happy to just throw thoughts out, without much in the way of evaluation. Mutually contradictory structures, speculative typologies, subversive ethical suggestions - they're all just left hanging. It's what makes his books stimulating - and it's what makes them difficult to commend. They're just a little bit irresponsible. Which is why I find it so hard to review Peter Leithart commentaries. On the one hand, I find them highly stimulating, and I think I'd always want to read him on any book I'm tasked with preaching (certainly, Deep Exegesis helped me on John, and Leithart's commentary helped me on Kings). But on the other hand, I read him with a veritable sack of salt at the ready. And so I'm torn - I could give this book 2 stars - because I'm not sure I really want all my friends to read it. I could give it 4, because I learnt so much from it. I'll settle on 3.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-13 00:00:00 George Deal Very good lay-level commentary of 1 & 2 Samuel. Leithart's focus is to keep his commentary on the ground-level. He focuses on a lot of practical application which is drawn from profound theological conclusions. This commentary is a wonderful example of how the distinction between "theological" & "practical" is mainly a contrivance of seeker sensitive evangelicalism.