Old Testament Library - Exodus

Childs, Brevard S. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974. ISBN: 0-664-20985-8. 659 pages (638 pages of commentary text).

This is an older commentary, but still quite valuable, especially for the preacher or teacher. Childs takes the exegetical and theological tasks very seriously, and provides a great deal of material that would be useful in sermon preparation. One must, of course, be prepared to wade through technical material, as this is no devotional commentary.

I found using this commentary an interesting experience after recent work with commentaries such as von Rad's Genesis, Ashley's Numbers and Milgrom's Leviticus commentaries, as well as various works by Noth. Childs falls somewhere between Noth (or von Rad) and Ashley in terms of philosophy. All acknowledge some sources and use form, source and redaction criticism, but for someone like Noth this information is the key issue, for Ashley, it's a fairly unimportant sideline, while Childs views a study of the prehistory of the text as an essential step in getting to the final exegetical product-the meaning of the passage in its canonical form.

The general outline of the commentary starts with the translation of a passage, a section of textual and philological notes, some discussion of the literary and history of the traditions, Old Testament context, New Testament context, history of exegesis, and theological reflections. Not all commentary sections have all these subheadings, but in general all follow this pattern. This arrangement allows the commentary user (provided you're not reading it through as I was) to move quickly to the aspects of the text that he or she finds most interesting.

While the coverage of technical issues is not nearly what one finds in Milgrom's three volume commentary-not surprising considering that this is a one volume commentary, and that volume smaller than one of Milgrom's-the examination of the canonical context, history of exegesis and the theological reflections are very, very useful. I found this commentary much superior to the older Old Testament Library volume on Exodus by Martin Noth, for example. This is not only because it is larger, and covers more issues, but also because the focus is on getting to the canonical meaning-something that is of interest to most users of such a commentary.

In many cases I would have appreciated more support for certain critical claims, as well as argumentation supporting dismissal of certain others, but this is only to be expected.

Despite the age, I recommend this commentary to preachers and teachers.