Commentary Compass

Samuel is one of the clearest examples of why commentary pairing is more useful than simply buying the two highest-ranked books. The interpreter faces an unusually unstable textual tradition, important differences among the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Qumran Samuel manuscripts, difficult Hebrew, sophisticated narrative artistry, major questions of historiography and composition, and some of the Old Testament’s most complicated theological material. Hannah, Eli, Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michal, Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar, Joab, Absalom, and Rizpah inhabit a world in which prophecy, monarchy, family, violence, worship, divine providence, political ambition, sexuality, and covenant promise continually intersect.

No one commentary is strongest in all those areas. A technically brilliant discussion can leave the theology comparatively undeveloped, while an unusually perceptive theological exposition may glide across a Hebrew or textual problem upon which interpretation actually depends. I therefore look for complementarity: the second volume should substantially enlarge the first rather than simply repeat it. For Samuel, that produces two especially strong pairings.

Pairing 1: V. Philips Long + David Toshio Tsumura

The Best All-Round Interpretation + The Strongest Technical Hebrew Anchor

V. Philips Long —

1 and 2 Samuel

(Tyndale Old Testament Commentary)

Long is the natural centre of my first pairing because he is the most balanced single commentary on Samuel. He understands that these books cannot be read adequately through only one lens. Historical questions matter, because Samuel presents itself as Israel’s remembered past; narrative art matters, because characterization, repetition, speech, irony, and plot carry enormous interpretive weight; theology matters, because the narratives repeatedly ask what God is doing through and despite the actions of human beings; and the final literary form matters, because readers encounter Samuel as a coherent narrative rather than as a filing cabinet of reconstructed sources.

His particular strength is historiographical judgment. Samuel contains literary artistry, remembered political history, theological interpretation, and stories whose precise relationship to modern historical writing requires care. Long avoids both extremes: he does not assume that sophisticated narrative artistry turns historical reference into fiction, but neither does he treat ancient historiography as if it were modern documentary reporting. This is especially valuable in the stories of Saul and David, where readers need to distinguish the narrator’s theological evaluation, the political interests visible within the stories, and the historical world those stories purport to represent.

Long is equally good at preserving the moral complexity of Samuel. Saul is not merely a wicked foil for David; David is not merely an ideal king whose faults are unfortunate exceptions; monarchy is neither simply rejected nor simply celebrated. Prophecy, divine sovereignty, human action, political calculation, covenant promise, and moral responsibility continually overlap. Long usually lets those tensions remain sufficiently open to reflect the narrative rather than resolving them through an overly neat theological system.

The limitation of the Tyndale format is that Long cannot provide the depth of technical discussion needed for every textual and philological problem. Samuel is simply too difficult a Hebrew text for a relatively compact commentary to carry that burden. That is why Tsumura makes such an effective partner.

David Toshio Tsumura —

The First Book of Samuel

and

The Second Book of Samuel

(NICOT)

Tsumura supplies the technical foundation that Long necessarily handles more selectively. His command of Biblical Hebrew, Semitic linguistics, grammar, syntax, lexical semantics, discourse, textual criticism, and comparative ancient Near Eastern languages makes these volumes indispensable whenever the wording itself is disputed. Samuel’s textual difficulties have historically encouraged commentators to emend the Masoretic Text readily, sometimes on the basis of the Septuagint, Qumran readings, or conjectural reconstruction. Tsumura repeatedly asks whether the Hebrew as transmitted may make perfectly good linguistic sense before replacing it.

That methodological restraint is a major contribution. It does not mean that the Masoretic Text is always original or that alternative witnesses should be discounted; Samuel unquestionably contains serious textual problems. Rather, Tsumura demonstrates that a difficult Hebrew expression is not necessarily a corrupt Hebrew expression. Students who work only with older critical commentaries can sometimes receive the impression that conjectural restoration is the normal route to a sensible text, whereas Tsumura frequently shows that better philology resolves the difficulty without reconstruction.

He is also stronger literarily than his reputation as a linguist may suggest. Narrative organisation, repetition, wordplay, discourse connections, and the relationship among adjacent episodes regularly appear in his interpretation. His discussion of major theological texts such as 2 Samuel 7 is substantial, and the completion of the 2 Samuel volume means that the method can now accompany the reader through the entire Samuel narrative rather than stopping with Saul’s death.

Tsumura’s weakness is almost the mirror image of Long’s. Technical precision can make the larger theological and narrative movement less visible, and a pastor may finish several pages of linguistic discussion knowing exactly how a clause works without yet knowing why the unit matters for the theology of Samuel. Long provides that larger interpretive map. Tsumura makes sure that the map has been drawn on secure textual ground.

Why this pairing works

Long + Tsumura is my first-choice pairing for advanced study, original-language work, seminary research, and anyone who wants the strongest two-volume intellectual foundation for Samuel. Long asks the broad questions about narrative, historiography, theology, character, and the book’s final form. Tsumura slows the reader down precisely where language and textual transmission can undermine an otherwise attractive interpretation.

The pairing is particularly valuable because Samuel’s theological questions often depend upon small textual decisions. Saul’s speeches, David’s responses, ambiguous pronouns, recurring vocabulary, narrative repetitions, and the precise wording of divine or prophetic statements can alter characterization significantly. Tsumura tests those details; Long helps decide what they contribute to the narrative as a whole.

This combination also prevents two opposite methodological mistakes. One is allowing textual criticism to become the interpretation, as though reconstructing the earliest recoverable wording automatically explains the story. The other is performing elegant literary or theological readings upon a wording that has not been examined closely enough. Long and Tsumura together offer unusually good protection against both.

Pairing 2: David G. Firth + Dale Ralph Davis

Close Final-Form Exegesis + Exceptional Narrative-Theological Exposition

David G. Firth —

1 & 2 Samuel

(Apollos Old Testament Commentary)

Firth is the ideal exegetical anchor for a preaching and teaching pair because he works carefully with the Hebrew text while maintaining sustained interest in the final literary form. He is fully aware of the complicated history of Samuel scholarship—source criticism, Deuteronomistic theories, the Story of David’s Rise, the Succession Narrative, textual plurality—but he does not allow those debates to disassemble the narrative before readers have understood how the present text works.

This is especially fruitful with characterization. Saul does not deteriorate through one explanatory sentence but through speeches, actions, fears, evasions, repeated encounters with Samuel and David, and the growing contrast between royal appearance and royal reality. David’s rise likewise develops through a network of narrative relationships involving Saul, Jonathan, Michal, Abigail, the Philistines, the men who gather around him, and eventually the tribes of Israel. Firth is alert to these patterns and therefore helps the preacher avoid extracting isolated episodes from the literary arcs that give them meaning.

The same strength becomes even more important in 2 Samuel. David’s establishment, the ark’s arrival, Nathan’s promise, Bathsheba and Uriah, Tamar, Amnon, Absalom, Joab, rebellion, and the closing chapters all require attention to placement as well as content. Firth’s final-form orientation enables him to ask how a particular narrative contributes to the book the church actually reads rather than making reconstructed literary prehistory the controlling object of interpretation.

His application is relatively restrained, which is an advantage in a pairing. Firth establishes what the text can responsibly bear; Dale Ralph Davis then demonstrates how much theological and homiletical life can be drawn from precisely those narrative features.

Dale Ralph Davis —

1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart

and

2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity

Davis is probably the commentator on Samuel most likely to make a preacher put down the commentary and immediately reread the biblical paragraph. His gift is exegetical noticing. A repeated word, an apparently unnecessary remark, a change of pace, a character’s silence, an ironic reversal, the ordering of scenes, or the narrator’s refusal to explain something can suddenly become the clue that makes an entire passage come alive.

His 1 Samuel volume is particularly good on the crossing trajectories of Saul and David. Davis does not reduce Saul to a villain or David to a plaster saint, yet he keeps the theological contrast visible. Saul increasingly grasps at control while David repeatedly encounters opportunities to seize what has been promised and refuses to acquire the kingdom by killing YHWH’s anointed. The tension between promise and waiting therefore becomes part of David’s formation rather than merely background chronology.

The 2 Samuel volume is equally strong because Davis refuses to sanitize the chosen king. Nathan’s promise in chapter 7 is allowed to remain glorious, but chapters 11 onward are not treated as an embarrassing interruption in the Davidic theology. David’s taking of Bathsheba, Uriah’s death, Tamar’s devastation, Absalom’s vengeance and rebellion, Joab’s ruthlessness, and the political fragmentation of the kingdom reveal the terrible consequences that can flow from the abuse of royal power. Davis’s exposition keeps grace and moral seriousness together rather than allowing one to erase the other.

His prose is pastoral, witty, and often memorable, but the humour rarely substitutes for interpretation. More importantly, his Christian application normally emerges from something actually observed in the Old Testament narrative. Technical readers will still need Tsumura, McCarter, Firth, or another substantial exegetical commentary, which is exactly why pairing him with Firth works so well.

Why this pairing works

Firth + Davis is my preferred pairing for pastors, teachers, Bible-study leaders, and anyone preparing a sustained sermon series through Samuel. Firth provides the exegetical discipline: textual issues, Hebrew, literary structure, characterization, and the final-form relationships among passages. Davis then demonstrates how that disciplined reading can become vivid theological exposition without collapsing the story into moralistic principles.

The combination is particularly effective against the two most common bad approaches to Samuel. One is hero preaching, in which Hannah becomes perseverance, Samuel becomes listening, Jonathan becomes friendship, David becomes leadership, and the narrative is converted into a collection of admirable traits. The other is technical paralysis, in which so much attention is given to textual witnesses, compositional layers, and historical reconstruction that the preacher never reaches what the narrative actually says about God, power, faith, failure, promise, and human character.

Firth keeps Davis accountable to close exegesis; Davis keeps the exegetical work moving toward proclamation. Their different literary styles also help. Firth is methodical and controlled, while Davis is rhetorically energetic. Reading both frequently reveals that a memorable sermon insight does not require abandoning scholarly precision.

The Best Advanced Third Voice

Antony F. Campbell —

1 Samuel

and

2 Samuel

(Forms of the Old Testament Literature)

The newly attached Campbell volumes do not displace either core pairing, because their greatest usefulness lies in asking a different set of questions. Campbell tries deliberately to integrate synchronic and diachronic interpretation. The final literary text must be read closely in its own right, but the traditions and editorial processes that produced it cannot simply be declared irrelevant. Structure, genre, setting, and meaning are therefore repeatedly brought together.

This makes Campbell particularly valuable beside Long + Tsumura. Long provides balanced historiographical interpretation, and Tsumura establishes philological control; Campbell then asks whether the literary form of a unit and its developmental history reveal dimensions neither ordinary final-form interpretation nor language study captures by itself. His structural analyses also encourage the reader to work in larger narrative units rather than allowing verse-by-verse commentary to obscure the shape of the story.

His macro-reading is especially provocative. Campbell interprets 1–2 Samuel as the story of the emergence of monarchy, increasingly oriented toward the establishment of David. Samuel’s birth and prophetic authority, the ark’s disappearance, the contested rise of Saul, David’s anointing, the political struggle that finally places David on the throne, and the subsequent testing of monarchy become parts of one long transformation in Israel’s public life.

The 2 Samuel volume contributes an especially useful revision of the familiar “Succession Narrative.” Campbell prefers Stories of David’s Middle Years for 2 Samuel 11–20 because succession is only one feature of these chapters and arguably not their governing subject. David’s sexual and homicidal misuse of power in chapters 11–12 becomes a behavioural pattern that echoes through Amnon, Absalom, family violence, rebellion, and political bloodshed. That insight is worth carrying into any serious reading of the latter half of Samuel.

Campbell should nevertheless remain a third voice rather than the controlling commentary. His reconstruction of literary development can at times determine his theological evaluation of the final text too strongly, as when he treats Saul’s early rejection as unfair or responds very sharply to the divine incitement in 2 Samuel 24. These are real questions, and his willingness to raise them is useful, but I would test his conclusions against Firth, Long, Tsumura, and the canonical narrative rather than simply adopting them.

The Best Theological Third Voice

John Goldingay —

The Theology of the Book of Samuel

Goldingay is the most natural theological addition to either pairing. His 2024 book is deliberately not a verse-by-verse commentary; that is precisely why it contributes something a commentary pair may still lack. Rather than stopping repeatedly for philology, text criticism, or every local scholarly debate, Goldingay follows the theological questions that emerge cumulatively as Samuel moves from Hannah and Shiloh through Saul and David to the violent disintegration of David’s household.

His summary of the book through three theological paradoxes is especially useful. YHWH is ambivalent about monarchy even while facilitating its arrival. Historical events emerge simultaneously through divine activity and human initiative. And both Saul and David, the first two kings chosen by YHWH, remain morally and religiously ambiguous human beings. Those three observations guard against several common oversimplifications at once.

The monarchy is therefore neither simply Israel’s sinful mistake nor God’s uncomplicated solution. Providence does not eliminate politics, strategy, courage, fear, ambition, violence, and human responsibility. Divine election does not turn Saul or David into moral ideals. Goldingay’s framework helps readers accept that Samuel itself may want those tensions to remain rather than regarding ambiguity as a problem created by inadequate exegesis.

He also broadens the theological field beyond the famous men. Hannah, Michal, Bathsheba, Tamar, families, victims, worship, prayer, sexuality, war, love, ambition, and loss all become part of what Samuel says about life before God. This is especially important for David, because a theology of the Davidic promise that does not simultaneously reckon with the people damaged by David’s exercise of power would be a seriously incomplete theology of 2 Samuel.

Goldingay fits especially well after Firth + Davis. Firth establishes what the narratives are doing, Davis brings their theological force into exposition, and Goldingay then helps the reader step back and ask how monarchy, divine involvement, family, prayer, political power, moral ambiguity, and covenant promise belong together across the book. For sermon-series planning rather than weekly technical exegesis, he may be the most valuable third volume of all.

How the Newly Attached Volumes Change the Pairings

The core pairings themselves do not need to change. Long + Tsumura still gives the most secure combination of broad interpretive judgement and technical control. Long protects the reading from becoming merely philological; Tsumura protects broad literary or theological interpretation from being built on insecure textual assumptions. The newly attached Campbell volumes now give this research pairing a particularly strong third dimension by asking how literary form and compositional development contribute to meaning.

Likewise, Firth + Davis remains the strongest preaching combination. Firth offers detailed final-form exegesis; Davis brings that exegesis to theological and homiletical life. Goldingay now makes the combination still richer because he gathers theological questions that ordinary commentary work can leave dispersed across dozens of passages.

Campbell and Goldingay also complement each other. Campbell is preoccupied with how this complex literature became the text it is and how its constituent forms work, while Goldingay is preoccupied with what theological world the resulting narrative invites readers to inhabit. Campbell is more likely to make the reader reconsider the boundaries or development of a literary unit; Goldingay is more likely to make the reader reconsider whether a theological tension should be solved at all.

The result is a particularly strong four-direction Samuel library: textual-linguistic precision from Tsumura, balanced historiography from Long, final-form literary exegesis from Firth, and theological exposition from Davis. Campbell and Goldingay then provide the two advanced perspectives—developmental-literary and synthetic-theological—that reveal how much even those excellent core commentaries leave available for further thought.

Which Pairing Should You Choose?

For research, original-language work, advanced theological study, and the strongest technical foundation, I would choose V. Philips Long + David Toshio Tsumura. Long gives the reader unusually good judgement on history, narrative, theology, and the final form; Tsumura supplies the linguistic and textual precision that Samuel demands. If adding a third book, I would choose Campbell when questions of literary form, composition, or the larger structure of Samuel are central.

For preaching, teaching, and sustained church study, I would choose David Firth + Dale Ralph Davis. Firth gives enough technical depth and literary control to keep the sermon honest, while Davis shows what close reading can become in the hands of a gifted theological expositor. If adding a third book, I would choose Goldingay, particularly when planning the theological movement of an extended sermon series rather than preparing one isolated passage.

There are other excellent combinations. Someone especially interested in textual criticism might substitute McCarter for Long beside Tsumura in order to hear two very different approaches to difficult readings. A pastor wanting a more explicitly homiletical resource might add Chisholm or Woodhouse. Yet those are specialised adjustments. The two pairings above remain the combinations I would recommend most widely.

Bottom Line

My first serious-study pairing is V. Philips Long + David Toshio Tsumura: the strongest all-round interpreter beside the strongest technical Hebrew commentator. My first preaching pairing is David G. Firth + Dale Ralph Davis: careful final-form exegesis beside unusually perceptive theological exposition.

The recently attached volumes make both pairings stronger rather than obsolete. Antony F. Campbell is the advanced specialist addition when the reader wants to understand how structure, literary form, traditional material, editorial development, and the final text relate. John Goldingay is the theological addition when the reader wants to understand how divine providence, monarchy, human initiative, morally ambiguous leaders, families, victims, worship, prayer, violence, and Davidic promise belong within one theological world.

That combination is particularly appropriate for Samuel because the book itself refuses to choose between divine purpose and human complexity. It gives us a chosen Saul who becomes tragic, a chosen David who can become both deliverer and victimizer, an institution of monarchy that is simultaneously problematic and divinely incorporated into Israel’s future, and a promise to David that survives moral failure without converting moral failure into innocence. The best commentary pairings do not tidy those tensions away. They help the reader see more clearly why the tensions are there.