Commentary Compass

For Commentary Compass, I use 2020 or later as the threshold for a “recent” commentary. That is deliberately restrictive. A commentary does not become important simply because it has a recent publication date, and an older work does not stop being useful because another book has appeared. The real question is whether a newer volume adds something substantial to a Samuel literature already containing major works by Firth, Tsumura, Davis, McCarter, Auld, Brueggemann, Chisholm, Morrison, Hoffner, and others.

Samuel is a particularly good test case because the post-2020 field is relatively thin. A new commentary must compete not only with strong older exegesis but also with unusually rich traditions of textual criticism, literary analysis, narrative theology, and preaching. I would therefore rather recommend three recent works that genuinely alter or enrich the conversation than manufacture a longer list simply because additional books satisfy the date requirement.

The recently examined volumes sharpen that conclusion. John Goldingay’s 2024 theological study is considerably more important than its non-commentary format might initially suggest, while Antony Campbell’s FOTL volumes, published well before the cutoff, provide a useful older benchmark against which some recent arguments can be tested. The result is still a short list, but the differences among the three recommended works are now clearer.

1. V. Philips Long —

1 & 2 Samuel

— Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (2020)

★★★★★

Long remains not merely my favourite recent commentary on Samuel but my highest-ranked Samuel commentary overall for the balance of originality and usefulness. That is an impressive achievement within the constraints of the Tyndale format. He does not have anything like the space available to Tsumura, Firth, McCarter, or Hoffner, yet he repeatedly identifies the real interpretive issue, evaluates the alternatives, and advances an argument that clarifies rather than merely catalogues the problem.

His handling of Saul’s rise and rejection remains the clearest example. One of the most difficult questions in 1 Samuel is why Saul appears to be chosen enthusiastically by God and then condemned with extraordinary rapidity. Many interpreters have regarded the material as evidence of conflicting traditions, and Antony Campbell’s older FOTL commentary presses the difficulty particularly hard, regarding Saul’s judgment in 1 Samuel 13 as remarkably severe and even characterising the charge as unfair. Long instead asks whether the narrative sequence itself has been understood correctly.

His proposal makes Saul’s earlier instructions crucial. Saul’s designation is followed by an intended opportunity to demonstrate his kingship and then by confirmation of royal authority. The Philistine issue mentioned earlier in the narrative is therefore not incidental background, Jonathan’s initiative becomes narratively important, and Saul’s failure at Gilgal is no longer an arbitrary test invented at the last moment. Whether every detail of Long’s reconstruction persuades equally, the great virtue is methodological: rather than dissolving the difficulty into incompatible sources, he asks whether close final-form reading can explain why the text has been arranged this way.

That approach characterises the commentary more broadly. Long treats Samuel simultaneously as literary art, historical representation, and theological testimony. Narrative sophistication is not made an argument against historical reference, while confidence in historical reference does not require pretending that Samuel resembles modern documentary historiography. The stories are shaped to interpret Israel’s remembered experience, and theological interpretation belongs to their very nature rather than being a devotional layer added after historical reconstruction.

Long is also particularly good at preserving moral complexity. Saul is tragic rather than merely villainous, David is chosen without becoming morally immune, monarchy is both divinely incorporated and potentially dangerous, and providence regularly operates through ordinary political and human processes. He seldom needs to announce these tensions abstractly because his reading of the narrative allows them to emerge.

The limitation remains the series format. Readers needing exhaustive treatment of Qumran variants, difficult Hebrew syntax, textual history, or the full secondary literature will still want Tsumura, Firth, McCarter, or another large technical commentary nearby. Yet if “recent” means a book that actually improves our reading rather than simply updates the bibliography, Long remains the clear first choice.

2. Marvin A. Sweeney —

1–2 Samuel

— New Cambridge Bible Commentary (2023)

★★★★½

Sweeney is the strongest recent alternative for readers who want a genuinely different interpretive angle rather than another version of standard Samuel exegesis. His controlling interest is leadership: how rulers acquire authority, consolidate it, exercise it, lose it, delegate it, and respond when family, military commanders, rivals, institutions, or geography limit their options. This makes political intelligence central rather than treating politics as mere historical background for theological themes.

His use of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Machiavelli’s The Prince is therefore more serious than a decorative comparison intended to make an ancient text sound contemporary. Sweeney uses these works as analytical conversation partners for Samuel’s portrayal of Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, Ish-bosheth, Abner, Joab, Absalom, and others. Strategy, military judgment, political legitimacy, succession, control of subordinates, geographic advantage, delayed action, and failures of command consequently receive unusually sustained attention.

This perspective is particularly illuminating in the David narratives. David’s rise cannot be understood only through divine election; Samuel spends enormous narrative energy showing political skill, alliances, military credibility, tribal relationships, control of Jerusalem, relations with Saul’s surviving house, and the actions of figures such as Abner and Joab. Later, David’s inability or unwillingness to deal decisively with Amnon and Absalom becomes not merely a family tragedy but a leadership failure with national consequences.

Sweeney also gives geography more interpretive importance than most recent commentators. Cities, routes, regions, tribal territories, and military movements are not inert map references. They help explain why political choices make sense, why certain locations matter strategically, and how David’s rise from local commander to ruler of a larger state is narrated spatially as well as theologically.

The commentary combines this synchronic interest with an ambitious diachronic reconstruction. Sweeney argues for a particular compositional history behind Samuel, including a northern Israelite dimension and a Jehu Dynastic History, and he reconsiders the relationship of 2 Samuel 9–20 and 21–24 within the larger work. These proposals are stimulating, but they are also where I would exercise the most caution. The political and literary observations often remain useful even when the reconstructed literary history is less secure.

That distinction explains the ★★★★½ rating. Sweeney is not as reliable as Long as the commentary that should control one’s reading of Samuel, and Firth remains a stronger comprehensive exegetical guide despite falling outside the 2020 cutoff. Yet Sweeney adds something those books do not: he makes readers confront Samuel’s extraordinary sophistication about the actual practice of political leadership. Read alongside Long or Firth rather than instead of them, the commentary can be exceptionally fruitful.

3. John Goldingay —

The Theology of the Book of Samuel

(2024)

★★★★★ as a theological companion

★★★★½ if judged as a commentary

Goldingay requires a qualification at the outset because this is not a conventional verse-by-verse commentary. Anyone needing primary exegetical coverage should still buy Long, Firth, Tsumura, or another running commentary first. Within its actual purpose, however, the newly examined volume confirms my earlier judgment: this is the most important recent theological companion to Samuel among the works considered here.

Its first major strength is organisational. Goldingay does not take Samuel apart and rearrange it immediately into static chapters on “God,” “monarchy,” “covenant,” “prophecy,” and “anthropology.” Instead, he works broadly through the narrative in sequence, allowing theology to emerge as events unfold. YHWH prepares the way for a king, designates a king, rebuffs a king, protects a king, establishes a king, and then watches the king whom he has established. The theological development therefore remains connected to Hannah, Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, and the situations in which particular claims about God become necessary.

Goldingay’s formulation of three theological paradoxes is particularly illuminating. YHWH is ambivalent about the introduction of monarchy even while participating in its establishment; events result from both YHWH’s activity and recognisably human initiative; and both Saul and David remain religiously and morally ambiguous despite being chosen by God. Those three tensions explain why Samuel persistently resists simpler theological schemes.

The first paradox protects us from saying either that monarchy is simply Israel’s rebellion or that kingship is simply God’s preferred institutional answer. The second prevents providence from swallowing up political strategy, family dynamics, fear, ambition, courage, warfare, and human responsibility. The third prevents the transition from Saul to David from degenerating into the story of a bad king replaced by a good king. David may stand within God’s purpose without becoming an uncomplicated moral exemplar.

The newly attached text also makes clearer how wide Goldingay’s theology is. Hannah, Michal, Bathsheba, Tamar, prayer, worship, family, sexuality, love, ambition, violence, victims, government, warfare, sanctuary, and political action all belong to Samuel’s theological world. That breadth matters because a theology focused only upon Samuel, Saul, David, monarchy, and covenant could reproduce the very royal perspective that the narrative itself repeatedly disrupts by giving substantial attention to those affected by royal decisions.

His movement through 2 Samuel is especially powerful. The chapters dealing with YHWH establishing a king consider David’s government, family, capital, dynasty, warfare, and sanctuary. The next major movement becomes YHWH watching a king, where Goldingay turns explicitly toward David’s victims, God’s response to wrongdoing, and the sword that never departs. The organisation itself therefore makes a theological claim: the Davidic promise cannot be understood responsibly if Davidic power and its victims are treated as separate topics.

Goldingay is also valuable on divine-human interaction because he allows biblical language about God responding, relenting, judging, protecting, and changing course to retain real force. He does not want the theology of sovereignty to turn every divine response into an appearance of change that was secretly fixed in advance, but neither does he portray YHWH as an unstable participant swept along by events. Readers from more tightly systematic traditions will want to evaluate some formulations carefully, but the questions are exactly the ones Samuel itself forces upon us.

The limitation is straightforward. Goldingay cannot settle the textual form of a difficult Samuel verse, evaluate every Qumran plus or minus, reconstruct an obscure Hebrew expression, or survey all the competing historical positions. His value begins after those tasks have been undertaken. As a second-stage theological book, read after or alongside primary commentary work, I now regard it as indispensable enough to merit ★★★★★ within its own category.

What the Newly Attached Antony Campbell Volumes Add — and Why They Do Not Enter the Recent Ranking

Antony F. Campbell —

1 Samuel

and

2 Samuel

(Forms of the Old Testament Literature, 2003–05)

★★★★½ overall — Important older methodological comparator

Campbell cannot enter a post defined by a 2020 cutoff: the two FOTL volumes appeared in 2003 and 2005. Nevertheless, the recently attached texts materially improve this update because they provide an excellent comparison with what the newer commentaries are trying to accomplish. Campbell represents an ambitious attempt to move beyond an older form criticism that disassembled texts into hypothetical stages while also resisting a purely synchronic reading that behaves as though the final text had no developmental history.

His recurring categories are structure, genre, setting, and meaning, and his stated goal is to make literary and developmental analysis serve interpretation. He repeatedly insists that the present text deserves to be read as meaningful literature in larger units rather than atomised into fragments, while also arguing that the processes by which older traditions were collected and shaped cannot responsibly be ignored. This makes him a useful methodological bridge between older source-oriented criticism and contemporary final-form interpretation.

The whole-book architecture is especially interesting. Campbell sees 1–2 Samuel as fundamentally concerned with the emergence and establishment of monarchy, increasingly focused upon David. Samuel’s prophetic emergence, the temporary disappearance of the ark from Israel’s centre, Saul’s accession and rejection, David’s anointing, the political struggle by which David actually becomes king, the establishment of Jerusalem and the dynasty, and the subsequent instability of David’s reign become movements within one interpretation of Israel’s transition into monarchy.

His treatment of 2 Samuel 11–20 remains one of the most valuable parts of the work. Campbell rejects the automatic designation “Succession Narrative” and instead speaks more neutrally of the Stories of David’s Middle Years. Succession is certainly present, but the narrative itself spends far more energy on David’s abuse of power, Bathsheba and Uriah, Amnon and Tamar, Absalom, family violence, rebellion, and the political consequences of royal wrongdoing.

Even more suggestive is Campbell’s argument about behavioural modelling. David sees what he wants, takes Bathsheba, and arranges Uriah’s death; subsequent stories portray Amnon taking what he wants, Absalom killing the brother he wants removed, and the sword spreading outward through David’s household and kingdom. Nathan’s declaration that the sword will not depart from David’s house consequently becomes an interpretation of the kind of world David’s own exercise of power has helped produce.

Campbell is nevertheless best used as a conversation partner rather than the controlling Samuel commentary. His developmental reconstruction can become too decisive at points, particularly when he judges Saul’s early rejection as unfair or reacts very sharply to the divine incitement in 2 Samuel 24. Those are legitimate interpretive problems, but I prefer Long’s instinct to ask first whether apparent incoherence can be explained within the received narrative before assigning it primarily to different compositional stages or evaluating its theology negatively.

That comparison actually strengthens Long’s position at the head of this recent list. Campbell identifies the real difficulty surrounding Saul; Long offers what I regard as the stronger final-form solution. Campbell identifies the literary force of David’s later family collapse; Goldingay carries many of the same morally serious questions into an explicitly theological synthesis. The older FOTL volumes therefore remain highly relevant even though they are not recent.

Why I Still Keep the Recent List Short

The Samuel field illustrates why recent should never become a synonym for preferable. Firth remains among the finest all-round substantial commentaries. Tsumura remains indispensable when Hebrew, textual criticism, and discourse analysis control the problem. Dale Ralph Davis remains one of the most perceptive theological expositors. Chisholm remains remarkably concentrated in literary and intertextual insight. McCarter, Auld, Brueggemann, Morrison, Campbell, and others continue to see things that no post-2020 work has rendered unnecessary.

Nor do I think a new edition or a recent print appearance should automatically reset the intellectual date of a commentary. What matters for this particular list is whether the interpretive work itself represents a genuinely post-2020 contribution. Otherwise the category quickly becomes bibliographically misleading.

The advantage of a short list is therefore clarity. Long offers the recent commentary I would most readily allow to control my reading. Sweeney offers the recent commentary I would most readily add when I wanted a sharply different political and critical perspective. Goldingay offers the recent theological companion I would most readily read once the primary exegetical work had been completed.

Final Assessment

V. Philips Long remains the clear first choice among recent commentaries on 1–2 Samuel. His importance lies not in having newer references but in offering interpretations that actually solve problems, especially his treatment of Saul’s commission, demonstration, and rejection. He combines literary sensitivity, historical seriousness, theological judgement, and remarkable economy, and I would still place him first in my overall Samuel ranking regardless of publication date.

Marvin Sweeney remains second because he contributes a perspective substantially different from the dominant evangelical commentaries. His attention to leadership, strategy, geography, military judgment, statecraft, and the failures of political control makes Samuel’s kings and commanders more intelligible as actual political actors. His compositional reconstructions are more debatable than his direct narrative observations, but precisely as a contrasting second voice he is highly valuable.

The recently attached text confirms John Goldingay in third place but strengthens his rating within his proper category. If forced into a commentary ranking, ★★★★½ remains appropriate because he does not perform the fundamental verse-by-verse work of Long or Sweeney. As a theological companion, however, I would now confidently call him ★★★★★. His three paradoxes—ambivalent monarchy, divine and human agency operating together, and morally ambiguous chosen kings—capture extraordinarily well the theological complexity that makes Samuel so difficult to simplify.

The newly attached Antony Campbell volumes remain outside the ranking solely because of date, not because of insignificance. They continue to offer one of the more interesting attempts to join literary form, developmental history, political interpretation, and theological meaning. In fact, reading Campbell beside Long and Goldingay is unusually productive: Campbell exposes the compositional and literary problems, Long often provides the strongest final-form exegetical resolution, and Goldingay asks what theological world emerges once those tensions are allowed to remain genuinely complicated.

The post-2020 Samuel shelf is therefore still small, but it is not uninteresting. Long improves the exegesis, Sweeney changes the angle of vision, and Goldingay deepens the theological synthesis. That is enough to justify all three while leaving the older masters firmly in place.