Customer Reviews

The New American Commentary - Numbers

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I read this commentary when our Bible study group discussed the book of Numbers and was very pleased with it.

This is (as of 2004) one of the most recent major commentaries on Numbers, and it interacts with many of the previous commentaries, including those of Allen (one of Cole's teachers), Ashley, Budd, Gray, Harrison, Levine, Milgrom, Noth, Olson, and Wenham. The bibliography and footnotes are thorough and up-to-date. (For example, through the footnotes it was easy to become familiar with recent scholarly discussions of how to interpret the large numbers in the book.)

Cole includes extensive discussion of the literary structure of the book as a whole and of each section and subsection of the book. Since Numbers contains a diversity of material, an understanding of its structure is crucial if one is to see how the different pieces fit together. He sees God's faithfulness as a main theme of the book.

Cole has a great deal of experience with biblical archaeology, and he gives a lot of archaeological background detail in the commentary. I found especially interesting his discussion of the oldest known fragments from the book of Numbers, two tiny silver scrolls containing the priestly blessing (Num. 6:24-26)
that date from around 600 B.C.