First and Second Samuel have generated an extraordinary commentary literature because the books combine some of the Old Testament’s finest narrative art with some of its most important theological developments. Hannah, Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, David, Abigail, Michal, Nathan, Bathsheba, Tamar, Amnon, Absalom, and Joab are not merely figures through whom events happen; the narrator develops them through dialogue, repetition, silence, irony, contrast, narrative analogy, delayed information, and carefully arranged scenes. At the same time, these stories carry Israel from the last stages of the judges into monarchy, establish the Davidic dynasty, expose the moral dangers of royal power, and create expectations that reverberate throughout the rest of Scripture.

“Most insightful” therefore does not simply mean “best overall commentary.” I am looking especially for works that repeatedly make the text look different after they have been read: a solution to a long-standing problem, a literary connection that reorganizes several chapters, a theological distinction that prevents a simplistic reading, or a structural proposal that compels us to reconsider what we thought the narrative was doing. Usefulness still matters, because novelty unsupported by the text has little lasting value, but this particular list rewards interpretive discoveries more heavily than comprehensiveness.

The newly incorporated volumes substantially improve this list. Antony Campbell’s FOTL commentaries bring a mature form-critical approach that refuses both old-fashioned atomization and a flat reading of the final text, while John Goldingay’s recent theological study asks what Samuel says about God, monarchy, family, prayer, wrongdoing, grace, judgment, and unresolved moral ambiguity. Campbell belongs in the main ranking because his work is still a running interpretation of 1–2 Samuel; Goldingay is best treated as a theological companion because his book deliberately operates at a different level from a verse-by-verse commentary.

1. V. Philips Long — 1 & 2 Samuel (Tyndale Old Testament Commentary)

Long remains my most insightful single-volume guide to Samuel because he repeatedly combines literary observation, historical seriousness, theological judgment, and careful attention to the Hebrew narrative without allowing any one of those concerns to dominate the others. His commentary is compact relative to the enormous size of 1–2 Samuel, yet the compression frequently sharpens rather than diminishes his interpretation. He is particularly good at reading episodes in relation to earlier instructions and later consequences, so an apparently puzzling divine judgment often becomes much more intelligible once the larger narrative sequence is reconstructed. This is one reason his treatment of Saul is especially valuable: instead of assuming that Samuel arbitrarily condemns a king for minor procedural mistakes, Long asks what Saul was actually commissioned to do and whether his later actions fulfil or violate that commission.

His treatment of 1 Samuel 10:7–8 and 13:1–14 is a good example of the kind of insight that earns the top position. Long argues that readers frequently misunderstand Saul’s first instructions and therefore also misunderstand the confrontation in chapter 13. Saul is not being punished merely because an impatient prophet arrived late and the king performed a sacrifice; the episode belongs to a larger test of whether Saul will exercise royal initiative under the authority of Yahweh’s prophetic word. This reading does not remove every difficulty from Samuel’s treatment of Saul, but it makes the sequence far less arbitrary and helps explain why later failures are presented as symptoms of something deeper than isolated mistakes.

Long is equally strong on David because he refuses both hagiography and cynical deconstruction. The narratives work hard to distinguish David from the violent opportunism around him, especially during Saul’s decline and David’s rise, yet the same narrator later exposes David’s catastrophic abuse of power without softening it. Long reads these sections as part of one coherent portrait: genuine faith in Yahweh does not make David morally flawless, and divine promise does not protect him from the temporal consequences of sin. His reading of the symmetrical conclusion in 2 Samuel 21–24 is especially helpful because the final arrangement forces Saul’s and David’s failures, Yahweh’s deliverance, the Davidic covenant, and the contribution of human supporters into one concluding theological frame.

2. David G. Firth — 1 & 2 Samuel (Apollos Old Testament Commentary)

Firth remains extraordinarily insightful because he has a strong instinct for places where conventional readings have become too comfortable. His commentary is literary without becoming impressionistic, theological without bypassing the text, and critically informed without assuming that the dominant historical-critical reconstruction must be correct merely because it is dominant. He makes good use of narrative scholarship, including insights associated with Fokkelman, but translates that material into an accessible running interpretation rather than reproducing a technical narratological apparatus. That makes him especially valuable for readers who want to understand how the story has been told and why the manner of telling matters.

One of Firth’s most provocative readings concerns David, Bathsheba, and Uriah in 2 Samuel 11. He resists reducing the episode to a familiar sermon about private lust followed by an increasingly desperate cover-up and stresses instead the exercise of royal power against Uriah. In his reading, David’s actions toward Bathsheba and the subsequent manipulation of Uriah are bound together within a political and legal abuse of kingship, with Uriah eventually becoming the target of a carefully engineered death. I would not follow every detail of Firth’s reconstruction, and I still think sexual desire and attempted concealment play a larger role than his interpretation sometimes allows, but his reading forces the interpreter to see that the chapter is not simply about an adulterous individual who happens to be king. It is about what happens when a king turns the machinery of royal authority toward satisfying and protecting himself.

Firth is also very strong on the ambivalence surrounding monarchy. Samuel does not provide a simple progression from bad judges to obviously good kingship; the demand for a king is theologically suspect, Saul is genuinely chosen by Yahweh, David is genuinely chosen in a different and ultimately decisive way, and the institution that solves some problems creates others of its own. Firth lets that tension remain rather than prematurely resolving it. This makes his commentary especially valuable for biblical theology, because Davidic kingship can be celebrated as promise while the narrative simultaneously demonstrates why Israel eventually needs a king better than David.

3. Antony F. Campbell — 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel (Forms of the Old Testament Literature)

Campbell is the major new addition to this ranking, and I would place the two-volume FOTL set this high because it repeatedly generates genuinely new interpretive possibilities. His mature form criticism is very different from the older caricature of form criticism as chopping the text into hypothetical oral fragments. Campbell deliberately begins with the present literary text, takes seriously the skill of the editors who shaped it, and then asks how the history behind the text may illuminate rather than dismantle the final product. His distinction between “process” and “product” readers is especially useful: the development of the text and the meaning of the received text are both legitimate objects of study, and neither should be pursued in a way that invalidates the other.

His largest insight in 1 Samuel concerns Samuel himself. Campbell argues that Samuel’s principal narrative function is not merely to inaugurate monarchy by anointing Saul and then reluctantly accommodate a new political institution. From the perspective of the completed narrative, Samuel’s career moves toward the anointing of David, with Saul’s installation and rejection becoming stages on that road. This helps explain why the Saul material can seem so severe and why Samuel, after establishing his prophetic authority, disappears from direct political importance long before David actually reaches the throne. I would state the case somewhat less strongly than Campbell because Saul is far too important narratively and theologically to function merely as preparation, but the proposal powerfully recentres the opening half of Samuel around the emergence of David.

Campbell is even more stimulating on the so-called Story of David’s Rise. Instead of assuming that scholars must identify one original continuous literary work with a precisely recoverable beginning and ending, he suggests that we may be dealing with numerous fundamentally independent stories capable of being assembled into more than one portrayal of David’s rise. This turns an old source-critical problem into a question about storytelling and collection. It also encourages greater modesty about arguments that depend upon identifying exactly where a hypothetical literary source originally began or ended.

His treatment of 2 Samuel 11–20 is perhaps the strongest reason for including him this high. Campbell recommends abandoning the traditional label “Succession Narrative,” since succession is hardly the obvious controlling concern of these chapters, and calling them instead the Stories of David’s Middle Years. He then observes that David’s behaviour in chapters 11–12 becomes a grim model for what follows: David wants and takes Bathsheba; Amnon wants and takes Tamar; David removes Uriah; Absalom removes Amnon; desire, seizure, concealment, and violence ripple through the royal household. Nathan’s warning that the sword will not depart from David’s house thus becomes not merely a prediction of punishment but a literary principle governing the stories that follow. Even readers who retain the traditional source labels will see 2 Samuel 11–20 more sharply after working through Campbell.

4. David Toshio Tsumura — The First Book of Samuel and The Second Book of Samuel (NICOT)

Tsumura moves down one place only because Campbell adds such a distinctive interpretive contribution; Tsumura remains indispensable for a different kind of insight. His great strength is showing how many supposedly corrupt, incoherent, or secondary passages become perfectly intelligible when the Hebrew is read more carefully. Comparative Semitics, grammar, discourse analysis, lexical study, and sensitivity to ancient Near Eastern usage repeatedly allow him to defend the Masoretic Text against unnecessary emendation. This is not a merely conservative instinct to preserve the received text at all costs; the best of Tsumura’s work demonstrates why the difficult reading actually makes linguistic and literary sense.

His synchronic philology is particularly important in Samuel because the textual problems are real and substantial. The Dead Sea Samuel manuscripts and the Septuagint sometimes preserve readings that appear preferable to the Masoretic Text, and Tsumura certainly does not pretend otherwise, but he repeatedly reminds interpreters that “difficult” is not the same as “corrupt.” A passage that appears awkward in English translation may turn out to reflect legitimate Hebrew discourse patterns or semantic possibilities obscured by modern expectations. The result is interpretively significant because textual emendation often produces theological and literary consequences; if the Hebrew text makes sense as it stands, the reader should understand that text before reconstructing a smoother alternative.

Tsumura also offers an important whole-book contribution. He treats the transition from Samuel to Saul to Saul-and-David and finally David’s reign as a coherent literary progression rather than merely an accumulation of rival sources. In 2 Samuel his arrangement of the final four chapters as a deliberate symmetrical epilogue is especially useful because the two poetic sections sit at the centre, framed by accounts of David’s warriors and then by narratives of royal sin and national disaster. Tsumura is not the commentary I would read first for theological exposition, but many of the best theological interpretations become more secure after his linguistic and structural work has removed false problems.

5. Dale Ralph Davis — 1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart and 2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity

Davis remains one of the most insightful expositors of biblical narrative because he notices what technically minded commentators can easily flatten out: humour, irony, timing, repetition, narrative surprise, contrast, emotional tension, and the force of a carefully placed detail. His writing is deliberately sermonic, but the best insights are not merely rhetorical embellishments. Again and again he perceives how the narrator wants the reader to feel about a scene before translating that perception into theological exposition. This makes Davis especially valuable after a technical commentary has settled the textual and historical questions.

He is particularly good at recognizing that narrative arrangement is itself interpretation. Second Samuel 5, for example, need not be read as a strict chronological sequence; the chapter functions more like a collage assembling episodes that together present the establishment of David’s kingdom. Once this is recognized, apparent chronological problems cease to dominate and the reader can ask what theological portrait the narrator is constructing through juxtaposition. Similar insights occur throughout his work on Saul’s decline, David’s wilderness years, the ark, covenant, Absalom, and the concluding chapters.

Davis also excels at exposing the difference between visible circumstances and theological reality. Saul may still possess the throne after Yahweh has rejected him; David may appear politically powerless while the narrative repeatedly signals that Yahweh is with him; Absalom may look overwhelmingly successful while the reader knows his rebellion rests under divine judgment. Davis’s weakness is the other side of his strength: occasionally a clever phrase or striking homiletical connection feels more confident than the underlying exegetical evidence warrants. Used beside Long, Firth, Tsumura, or Campbell, however, his ability to make narrative theology memorable is exceptional.

6. Robert B. Chisholm Jr. — 1 & 2 Samuel (Teach the Text Commentary Series)

Chisholm is one of the most rewarding shorter commentators because he has an unusually sharp eye for intertextual and intratextual echoes. He repeatedly notices vocabulary, motifs, and narrative correspondences that connect apparently separated episodes and allow one scene to interpret another. This is especially fruitful in Samuel, whose narrative constantly recalls earlier speeches and songs. Hannah’s song, Samuel’s victories, the rise of David, the Davidic covenant, and David’s later song of deliverance form a network rather than a sequence of isolated theological moments.

His treatment of the verb “thunder” provides a good illustration. Yahweh’s thundering against the Philistines in 1 Samuel 7 recalls Hannah’s anticipation that Yahweh would thunder against his adversaries and anticipates David’s poetic celebration of Yahweh’s thunder in 2 Samuel 22. Samuel’s victory is therefore not merely one successful military episode; it participates in a pattern that moves from Hannah’s theological vision through Samuel toward the anointed king. Chisholm also links Samuel with Moses through prophetic revelation and intercession, helping explain why Samuel possesses the authority to mediate Yahweh’s choice and rejection of kings.

This method becomes particularly useful in David’s reign because apparently positive and negative episodes can be placed against earlier biblical standards. David’s conduct in 2 Samuel 8, for example, can be read against Deuteronomic expectations concerning royal dependence upon Yahweh rather than military technology and accumulated resources. Chisholm then traces how prophetic hopes for a future Davidic ruler grow precisely because the historical David can embody the ideal only incompletely. The commentary is much less exhaustive than Tsumura or Campbell, but its capacity to reveal theological connections across the canon makes it unusually insightful for teachers and preachers.

Specialist Theological Companion

John Goldingay — The Theology of Samuel

Goldingay’s 2024 volume should not be forced into the numbered commentary ranking because it deliberately does something different. Rather than proceeding verse by verse, he follows the narrative in six large movements centred on Yahweh preparing for a king, designating a king, rebuffing a king, protecting a king, establishing a king, and watching a king. That structure is itself an interpretive claim: Samuel is fundamentally about what Yahweh does in relation to human kingship, not merely about the biographies of Samuel, Saul, and David. The thematic organisation allows issues such as prayer, vocation, family, government, dynasty, war, wrongdoing, judgment, and divine response to receive sustained reflection that running commentaries often cannot provide.

One of Goldingay’s most valuable methodological insights is his willingness to let narrative theology remain untidy. Samuel can say that God relents and that God does not relent; it can present monarchy as both problematic and divinely used; it can narrate David’s forgiveness, judgment, promise, and continuing moral ambiguity without reducing them to a neat systematic formula. Goldingay argues that narrative can present facts without always telling readers exactly how to reconcile them, and he treats this not as a defect to be corrected but as part of the book’s theological character. That instinct is particularly helpful in Samuel, where attempts to harmonize every tension frequently make the narrative less rather than more intelligible.

His later treatment of David is also valuable because he refuses to let the Davidic promise turn into protection from moral scrutiny. The section beginning with 2 Samuel 11 concentrates explicitly on David’s victims, Yahweh’s response to David’s wrongdoing, the continuing sword in his household, famine, epidemic, and the complicated portrait of the God of David. David remains central to Yahweh’s purposes, but election and promise do not convert abuse of power into a theological footnote. Goldingay therefore complements Woodhouse-style Christological exposition and the more traditional evangelical commentaries by making the unresolved moral and theological tensions of Samuel part of the theology rather than problems to be cleared away before theology begins.

I would use Goldingay after one of the main exegetical commentaries rather than instead of one. Long, Firth, Tsumura, or Campbell should establish what an individual passage is doing; Goldingay is then especially useful for asking what cumulative theological questions arise from several passages together. His final placement of Samuel beside Kings, Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, Psalms, wisdom literature, and the rest of Scripture gives the book a broad canonical horizon without pretending that Samuel’s own distinctive tensions disappear once that larger horizon is reached.

What the Newly Added Volumes Change

Campbell changes the main ranking because his FOTL work is far more than a specialist catalogue of forms. The two volumes represent a mature attempt to combine final-form literary interpretation with responsible attention to the history by which the text emerged. His proposal that Samuel’s narrative role ultimately points toward David, his reframing of the Story of David’s Rise as a collection of potentially independent stories, and especially his replacement of the “Succession Narrative” with the Stories of David’s Middle Years all materially affect how major sections of Samuel are read. For that reason I would now put him ahead of Tsumura in an insight-specific ranking, even though Tsumura remains more useful for many technical exegetical questions.

Goldingay changes the post in another way. The older ranking naturally focused on running commentaries, but The Theology of Samuel shows how much interpretive value can emerge when a scholar is freed from the obligation to say something about every verse. His thematic treatment makes the tensions surrounding God, kingship, judgment, grace, wrongdoing, and divine promise unusually visible. He therefore belongs beside the main ranking in the same way that a strong biblical-theological monograph can sometimes illuminate a book more profoundly than another conventional commentary.

The two additions also complement one another unusually well. Campbell is fascinated by how the text came to take its present literary shape and how that shape generates meaning, while Goldingay concentrates on what theological realities emerge when the completed narrative is allowed to retain its tensions. Campbell explains why we should not flatten the text’s compositional history; Goldingay explains why we should not flatten its theology. Together they make Samuel feel more complex, but also more intelligible.

Final Assessment

V. Philips Long remains my most insightful all-round commentary on 1–2 Samuel. His ability to combine narrative sensitivity, historical seriousness, theological interpretation, and carefully reasoned solutions to difficult passages gives him an unusual concentration of high-value insights. His reconstruction of Saul’s commission and failure remains a particularly good example of interpretation that changes several chapters rather than merely one difficult verse.

David Firth remains second because he regularly unsettles inherited readings while staying closely engaged with the literary text, and his treatment of David’s exercise of royal power in 2 Samuel 11 remains especially provocative. Antony Campbell now enters at number three, ahead of Tsumura, because the FOTL set supplies several large-scale reinterpretations of Samuel that I expect to keep returning to: Samuel as preparer of David, multiple stories rather than one recoverable Story of David’s Rise, the rejection of “Succession Narrative” as the best controlling category for 2 Samuel 11–20, and the modelling of later royal-house violence on David’s actions in chapters 11–12.

Tsumura remains indispensable where linguistic and textual problems have generated unnecessary theories of corruption or fragmentation, while Dale Ralph Davis remains the commentator most likely to turn a literary observation into memorable theological perception. Chisholm deserves continued inclusion because his eye for narrative and canonical echoes repeatedly reveals connections that larger commentaries can pass over. These six are not interchangeable; that is precisely why the list works. Each makes a different aspect of Samuel newly visible.

Finally, Goldingay’s The Theology of Samuel is the specialist companion I would now add after the main six. It does not replace a commentary, but it does something most commentaries cannot do at equal length: follow the theological pressure created by kingship, promise, failure, divine relenting, judgment, family catastrophe, unresolved suffering, and the continuing purposes of Yahweh across the whole work. The best Samuel library therefore needs both close narrative interpretation and theological synthesis, because the brilliance of Samuel lies partly in the fact that its theology is rarely detached from the morally complicated lives through which it is narrated.