Wisdom Commentary 2 Kings

“Highly recommended to all academic libraries.”

“Park’s 2 Kings reflects the current state of feminist biblical scholarship: sophisticated and rigorous, infusing trained exegesis with clergy and lay voices (and in some cases adding feminist activists to the mix). She addresses one group in particular that has received little attention in comparable commentaries: widows. Park invites readers to shift their focus from the prophet’s strategy to meet the widow’s need and instead to sit with the widow for a moment and consider the intersecting issues that led to her poverty.”

"2 Kings is an especially fraught book of the Bible. The overwhelming masculinity of YHWH is traced throughout the text. But the chapters make clear that such imagery is tenuous at best, inviting the reader to reimagine other influences that shape the narrative and thus might reshape concepts of the divine."

"The latest in the Wisdom Commentary series, Suzie Park's new book focuses on the present, Masoretic text of 2 Kings, though with periodic comment on some of the ancient versions and presumed sources and redactional layers behind the Masoretic form. While Park is particularly interested, as in the other volumes of the series, in what a feminist lens can reveal, she is quite aware that 2 Kings is not always eager to oblige; and so she considers also other approaches, literary, historical, and theological, as contexts in which to set her feminist inquiries. On all of these approaches to 2 Kings, Park offers a generous compendium of scholarly views, always as formulated in her own clear and accessible way and not stinting on her own insights into the text. Indeed, she is able to show how a feminist lens can illuminate aspects of the narrative that other approaches had slighted or missed. Even where one may differ with her interpretations, they remain provocative, f orcing the reader to reconsider old views. Park, in short, has written a commentary of value from which both lay and scholarly audiences will definitely profit."

"Park argues that 2 Kings both affirms the masculinity of the God of Israel, as evidenced primarily by his military prowess, and challenges it in light of the destruction first of Israel and then of Judah. Like all the commentaries in this series, this volume is well-researched, carefully argued, and often challenging in its conclusions."