The Old Testament Book of Judges is known for its cycle of sin, oppression, and deliverance. When the people cry out to God, he sends them a judge to rescue them from their oppressors.
Although we don’t believe any sin has been involved, we have definitely heard our users crying out for Trent Butler’s Word Biblical Commentary on Judges! After a delay much longer than what we would have wanted, we are pleased to announce that that Judges (WBC vol. 8) is finally available for the Accordance Library!
Having met Trent Butler at conferences in the past, I was delighted to hear the “voice” of this gentle scholar in the pages of his commentary on Judges as I read through portions on it. While the Word Biblical Commentary has a reputation for being somewhat technical at times (knowledge of Hebrew and Greek is assumed), I found Butler’s Judges volume to be immensely readable and inviting.
As an example of this, Butler begins his preface with the question, “Should fun be the first word that comes to mind when describing the writing of a commentary?” And fun is exactly what I seemed to feel at somewhat of a subtext level as I read Butler’s exposition. He seems to be expressing both wonder and delight as he chips away at the peculiarities of this Old Testament historical book.
Butler gives great attention in his Judges commentary to literary elements of irony, satire, and humor, which he says greatly characterize this book. He sees the Book of Judges as something of a riddle, which he invites readers to help him solve:
Commentary readers are invited to join in the detective work as we seek to solve these riddles and many more rampant in the pages of this book. Is it really beset with an unsettled text, narrated without historical base, plagued with untenable theology, prepared only to be preached against, and so subtly designed that its structure and purpose must remain mysteries? I hope to be able to show in the following explanation of the text that efforts to understand Judges are not quite as impossible as they might appear (Introduction, p. xxxix)
Accordance users will be glad to know that our developers have carefully examined the text of Trent Butler’s commentary on Judges and have identified the following content types: References, Titles, English Content, Greek Content, Hebrew Content, Scripture, Transliteration, Translation, Translation Notes, Bibliography, Page Numbers, Author, Table Titles, and Captions. These various kinds of content have been tagged according to these designations which allow the reader to make very specific searches based on these fields which have been identified.
A couple of points of clarification: There has been some confusion recently regarding a 2009 edition of Butler’s Judges commentary and another edition with a 2014 date. Accordance users should know that the content of both of these editions is the same. The book was originally released in 2009 and then reprinted in 2014, but there is no internal difference between these two. To be clear, the 2014 edition is not a revision. The content in the WBC Judges commentary in Accordance is the most up-to-date edition available.
Second, we are initially releasing Butler’s Judges commentary only as a stand-alone volume. At a later date, it will be incorporated into the larger WBC commentary sets (Old Testament set and OT/NT set). At that time users who have purchased the individual Judges volume will not have to pay for it again.
Click on the image above for a fullsize screenshot of
Trent Butler’s WBC Judges commentary.
WBC Volume 8: Judges
$54.90