The perplexing arrangement of the laws in Leviticus 19 invariably invites comment about their seeming lack of order. Scholars have used the miscellaneous character of the laws as evidence for their originating in different sources, times, and places, before finding a common location in Leviticus 19. Thinking that delineates source after source depends upon a misunderstanding of how lawgivers formulated biblical laws. A different picture emerges once one takes stock of a process of legal formulation; this process, which is deeply implanted in every part of the Pentateuch, accounts for the Pentateuch's unique integration of law and narrative.

Since his 1972 study of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures, provocatively entitled In Man We Trust, Walter Brueggemann has challenged the settled verities of Christian communities of faith and the orthodoxies of biblical scholarship. In over two dozen books and numerous popular and academic articles on the texts and themes of the Hebrew scriptures, Brueggemann has explored and articulated his growing thesis that the Bible is a powerful, critical, and energizing resource for human and social transformation in our times. Concentrating on the prophetic corpus since his programmatic 1978 book, The Prophetic Imagination, as well as giving significant attention to the historical books and the psalter, Brueggemann himself has become an important prophetic voice, calling the contemporary church to fidelity to Yahweh's uncompromising claims as these are articulated in the Mosaic, covenantal, and prophetic traditions of the Hebrew scriptures.

One of the central aspects of Jewish theology, and Jewish mysticism in particular, is the conception of the nature of God's being and the appearance of the divine before humanity. No one view has dominated the spectrum of Jewish interpretations, since the biblical text is the only common frame for the wide variety of speculations. At issue is whether the one God depicted in the Hebrew Bible is manifest to humans directly or through the agency of a divine, semidivine, or created power. Even the nature of angelic figures in the Bible remains a matter of debate, both in its original context and through later interpretations. Does the angelic figure physically represent God's form, or is it a literary device that metaphorically describes God's presence? The same is true of divine anthropomorphism in the Bible. Do the descriptions of God's hands or feet imply that God possesses a definite shape similar to that of human bodies, or should these descriptions also be viewed metaphorically, reinforcing a similar view to that expressed about angelic figures: no physical characteristics can be attributed to anything heavenly or divine? Finally, how does this accord with the spatial manifestation of God in the tabernacle through his kavod or glory?

The story of Amalek's deed occurs twice in the Bible: in Exod 17:8–16 and in Deut 25:17–19. The account in Exodus is quite succinct: “Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Refidim” (Exod 17:8); in contrast, the description in Deuteronomy paints a broader and more detailed picture: “Remember what Amalek did to thee by the way, when you were come out of Egypt: how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all that were feeble in thy rear, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God” (Deut 25:17–18). The Exodus version, although sparing in its description of the particulars, offers the more dramatic account of the war between Israel and Amalek.

Fifty years ago, Charles C. Torrey, writing about Esther, asked on the pages of this journal, “Why is there no Greek translation of the Hebrew text? Every other book of the Hebrew Bible, whatever its nature, has its faithful rendering (at least one, often several) in Greek. For the canonical Esther, on the contrary, no such version is extant, nor is there evidence that one ever existed.” It is common knowledge that the extant Greek versions of Esther, both the longer Septuagint text and the shorter A-text, are textually distant from the Hebrew Masoretic version. Indeed, the distance is so great that when a passage in the Complutensian edition (5:1–2) does correspond to the Masoretic text, Robert Hanhart confidently labels it as “newly translated.” His characterization seems justified in this case; the two verses required a new translation because the original Septuagint text had been removed, along with the apocryphal addition D, and put at the end of the book in accordance with the Latin tradition. Hanhart correctly states, “It is improbable that such an intervention, which sacrifices the inner coherence of the Greek text to the benefit of the Masoretic text, belongs to old Greek tradition,” indicating “a scholarly re-working according to the Masoretic text in the period of the Renaissance”; his confidence, however, rests on the fact that scholarly literature contains nothing about a Greek Esther that resembles the Masoretic text.