Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms (review)

Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms is part of a series from Baker Academic, which includes previously published guides to the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, and the Prophets. The present volume treats Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. Its articulated aim is to provide "advanced undergraduates, seminary students, pastors, and lay teachers of the Bible," with a conduit "to the rich resources in the scholarly literature that lay beyond their grasp" (p. 9). In this regard, the author attains his stated objective. Professor Estes displays full command of the primary material, the range of interpretive modes, and the relevant bibliography. The presentation is organized, clear, and free of unexplained jargon and technical terminology, rendering the tome fully accessible to its target audience. The utility of the volume suffers only in the sparseness of the index. More significantly, the high quality of the guide is not fully sustained or consistent throughout. The Song of Songs section, which is representative of the Handbook's strengths and weaknesses, is a good starting point for a broader assessment of the work.

The Song of Songs chapter commences with a comprehensive, thoughtful, and balanced introduction to key matters such as provenance, structure, and purpose. The reader is exposed to the full spectrum of exegetical frameworks and an up-to-date array of scholarly publications. While Baker Press and the Handbook series are oriented to evangelical Christians, the introduction, to the author's credit, is non-doctrinal in its treatment of such issues as Solomonic authorship and theological allegory. The commentary section, which proceeds in order through the Song, is especially helpful in its brief glosses of key technical and Hebrew terms, presented in transliteration, such as wasf (p. 400) and pardes (Song 4:13, p. 419). Additionally, the discussions are well grounded in Ancient Near Eastern evidence and realia from the Biblical era. For instance, when discussing the Song's seasonal images of nature in bloom, the author notes the testimony of the tenth-century Gezer calendar that, "the second pruning of the vines occurs in June" (p. 412).

Unfortunately, the author's methodological rigor lapses in two crucial respects. The complexity of the Song and the elusiveness of its organizational thread are acknowledged, appropriately, in the introduction. The commentary, however, frames the whole work as a sustained, cohesive tale of two fully realized characters, King Solomon and a young bride named Shulamith. This approach, idiosyncratic at best, undercuts the introduction's effectiveness by foreclosing the reader's interpretive options. The author runs into serious trouble at several junctures, such as his reading of the violation imagery in Song 5:6–7. The idea that a King's actual bride would wander the streets of the capital, unaccompanied, and be accosted by city watchmen, strains credibility. Also, the author, at times, abandons scholarly nuance in favor of moralistic homily. The following comment, concluding the Song of Songs chapter, is typical: "In God's design, intimacy in marriage extends benefits beyond the couple to their community. As their love has already been situated within their larger family context, so now its ripples bring delight to the society around them" (p. 438). The commentary essentially inserts a divine presence into the Song and ventures well beyond the text in an attempt to tether the poetry to "family values."

The volume's strength is in the Job and Ecclesiastes chapters. Both books are treated in great depth, with acute sensitivity to mechanical and structural issues, as well as matters of theology and message. The space and thought devoted to the two books is consistent with the author's explicit interest in the way "Job and Ecclesiastes probe the perennial problems of evil and significance…" (p. 9). While the Job and Ecclesiastes chapters, as with Song of Songs, engage the biblical works in their entirety, according to their own structure and order, a different method is utilized with Proverbs. The author lays out topics (twelve in all) such...