Customer Reviews

Justice and Loyalty: A Commentary on the Book of Micah - ITC (International Theological Commentary)

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Alfaro's commentary was the most helpful book I used in preparation for teaching a seven week Bible Study class on Micah that had hour long sessions. The other texts I used were Wolf's Augsburg commentary (for which I do not know enough Hebrew to follow), the Anderson/Freedman Anchor Bible (again, often over my head) and volume 2 of Sweeney's Berit Olam/Liturgical Press (also excellent but rather brief).

Alfaro for the most part only references theories and research that he finds plausible and helpful for a general reader. Thus he avoids broad outlines of the history of interpretation or describing every possible explanation.

Important themes are national disarmament, prophecy as a call to conversion and salvation (rather than a prediction of the future), the dissenting social voice of a prophet and the way we are prone to look back to our traditions (David, Exodus, Sinai) to make sense of the present rather than wait for a change sometime in the future.

I appreciated the way he adopted the reading of chapters 4 and 5 as a back and forth dialogue with false prophets - (taking his lead from Alsonso-Schokel, Sicre and van der Woude) - a very creative and helpful technique for the whole class.