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The New American Commentary Volume 4 - Deuteronomy

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The New American Commentary is the continuation of the tradition established by the older An American Commentary series under the editorship of Alvah Hovey at the end of the nineteenth century. The format makes the materials available to layman and scholar alike. The commentaries are based upon the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. The individual commentators, however, have the freedom to develop their own translations of the original text where they differ from the NIV. Technical points of grammar and syntax are placed in the footnotes rather than in the text. Footnotes also provide the reader with a wealth of significant bibliographic references to a wide range of resources. Students and professors alike will find these paths to further research extremely helpful and rewarding.

Eugene Merrill is professor of Old Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. He provides a brief but helpful Introduction that holds to Mosaic authorship and an early date prior to 1400 B.C. At pertinent points in the commentary the author offers further explanation of the existence and/or lack of archaeological evidence supporting the conquest of Canaan. His summation of the theology of Deuteronomy provides readers with a clear understanding of the significance of covenant to the theocratic community of Israel.

According to Prof. Merrill, the primary purpose of Deuteronomy is "to call the people Israel to covenant renewal" (67). He often disagrees with the identification and interpretation of alleged anachronisms that critical commentators use to support either non-Mosaic authorship or extensive post-Mosaic editing. Throughout the commentary, interpretive problems are identified, discussed, and viable solutions offered. The following are examples of such problems: the ethical dilemma of Moses' message to Sihon in 2:27-29; God's apparent apportioning of heavenly bodies to heathen nations in 4:19 so that they might worship them; and, Moses's disqualification from entering the promised land in 32:48-52. One of the important distinctions for Deuteronomy is in the matter of the usage of the second person singular and plural in the Hebrew. Merrill clearly defines the exegetical significance of both usages.

Merrill's identification of the various sections of 12:1-25:16 with the appropriate commandment of the Ten Commandments provides a worthy alternative to the divisions proposed by Walter C. Kaiser in Toward Old Testament Ethics (Zondervan).

I compared this commentary to Thompson (TOTC) and Craigie (NICOT). Merrill helps you see the rationale for the structure of Deuteronomy. He is much better at it than Craigie and especially better than Thompson. Merrill really helps you see the unity in Chapters 12-26, the section of the book that seems full of unrelated parts.

Merrill disappoints however in His lack of theological depth. There are places in Deuteronomy where the theology is as deep as a river, and Merrill will only wade to his ankles. Take for example Deuteronomy 8:3 "Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Merrill's comments: God allowed "them to hunger and then to be fed by the miraculous supply of manna . . . an act so clearly supernatural that the poeple had to recongnize that it was all God and not of themselves. . . . There are relative values in life, and one of them is that spiritual food is more important than physical." Compare to Craigie's masterful comments:

"The severity of the wilderness period undermined the shallow bases of confidence of those who were not truly rooted and grounded in God. The wilderness makes or breaks a man; it provides strength . . . not the strength of self-sufficiency, but the strength that comes from a knowledge of the living God. When the people were hungry, God fed them manna . . . designed to teach the Israelites a fundamental principle of their existence. . . The basic source of life was God and the words of God to his people; every utterance of the mouth of the Lord was more basic to Israelite existence than was food."

Merrill waded, but Craigie plunged in. There are other places in which this weakness of Merrill's is evident. Compare Merrill with Thompson on 10:14-15. Merrill states the facts of the verse like a car maintenance manual. Thompson has marveled at the significance of God's self-existence and written a page of profound theological meditation (it's on page 148 of his commentary).

Merrill may have some places in his commentary where he is more theologically reflective, but from what I've seen so far, it is not his strength.

In short, Merrill can make sense of the structure of Deuteronomy, but Craigie and Thompson are invaluable for their depth of theological reflection. Own all three.

This is a very good conservative commentary on Deuteronomy.
Merrill's introduction includes a spirited defense of the traditional 1447/1446 B.C. date for the Exodus and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Some other noteworthy features include: (1) Development of the idea that the Decalogue provides the overall organizing principle for the arrangement of the detailed covenant stipulations of Deut. 12-26; (2) Detailed discussion of Deuteronomy as a "covenant renewal" document structured along the lines of Hittite suzerain-vassal treaties of the second millennium B.C.; (3) Footnotes on virtually every page point the reader to the scholarly literature on Deuteronomy up to 1994.

This is a great work by one of evangelicalism's greatest experts on the topic. From a solidly conservative perspective, the author expounds this foundational book of Moses in a highly knowledgeable manner, being well-informed by scholarship from all sources.