Review of Hartley's Commentary on Job

Throughout my study of Job, I have leaned heavily on one commentary, Book of Job, New International Commentary on the Old Testament by John E. Hartley.

Hartley's 591 page commentary on Job is published in the series, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, by Eerdmans. The first book I worked through in that series was a commentary on Ruth by Robert L. Hubbard. I found that commentary very readable and also  exciting and so have looked for other commentaries for that series. The book of Ruth is relatively easy to make interesting -- its text in English is easy to read; it is a story that is easy to tell. 

The book of Job is not so. Job is a Wisdom book, with conversations that are difficult to follow and an overarching philosophical concept that is not easy to accept. Just in English, it is a difficult book. It is apparently much more difficult in Hebrew, with some lines difficult to translate and some differences between ancient manuscripts. Hartley, in a conservative evangelical tradition, attempts to stay close to the received text but in one place agrees that several chapter fractions are out of order.

In a format similar to that of Robert Alter, Hartley provides his own translation, with footnotes, footnotes that comment primarilty on the Hebrew translation. I like the fact that I can read the text within the book itself. The commentary is easy to follow but it is not always easy to identify footnotes with the appropriate text.  Unlike Alter's notes (which are essentially commentary), Hartley's footnotes are typical footnotes, with abbreviated references to a variety of other sources, intended for the serious seminary student but not really readable for a retired mathematician who is relaxing in a lounge chair. However, at the end of each major passage, Hartley does include section entitle AIM, intended to express the main purposes of the recent studied text. For a difficult text like the book of Job, these sections are very helpful. Indeed, someone attempting to lead a church bible study on Job might be content to stick to these sections. (But the book is still difficult.)

I originally posted a much abbreviated version of this review after a week of aches and low grade fever. I still have not given this commentary the attention that it deserves, so let me summarize my review by saying that this is an excellent book for the serious Christian student of Job, but far too advanced to be studied in a church setting. If one is leading a 12 week class on the book of Job, in a typical American church, I would use this book as a resource but the people who might really want to purchase this book would be a very small collection of nerdy friends. (You know who you are!_