It seems that the authors focus throughout the book and perhaps have the central theme that God’s promises are constant and continue throughout the history of man and to date. This promise being the rule of Christ. They continually communicate to the reader that God will have his way regardless of man’s obedience or disobedience. Consequences exist for both paths, but ultimately God will bring to pass and fulfill his promises. It is clear that those promises are more about the messianic fulfillment and the completion of the Davidic line than about the nation of Israel itself.
Although they seem to have a bias as they perhaps play down the importance of the nation of Israel itself, it remains clear that the ultimate result will be the coming of the Messiah. Key books such as Isaiah are treated and looked at from a Messianic perspective.
Zuck looks at the wisdom books in chapter 6. He includes Song of Solomon with Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. He devotes 48 pages to the analysis and brings to the reader a balanced view of the importance of wisdom. The instruction given to man and to woman (Song of Songs) for the pursuit of wisdom and it’s attributes. He seems to stress significant importance to these books. They are treated as books practical for contemporary Christian living.
The relationship with the New Testament is undeniable. References are made to the New Testament and obvious fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies as previously mentioned, much of the focus is in the chapter on Isaiah. Interestingly, I felt that House dealt more directly with New Testament references throughout his work than did Zuck.
I probably will purchase this book for my library. The treatment of God’s sovereignty and particularly the importance of the worship of God. In fact there is one treatment of issue of idols within the book that impacted me and that I had never considered. In essence the thought is that God considers idolatry to be the vilest of all sins that the nation of Israel created. Although I know that most of us consider many things to be idols in our lives. It is important that we place God above all else. I never really made the connection between the commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart soul and mind. As the nation of Israel choose idolatry as their most frequent and loved sin, they were, and we are choosing to do something so vile and disgusting before God it boggles the imagination.
This is a college textbook. The reading of it requires concentration and obvious pre-reading of the Bible to fully appreciate and understand principals within it. I believe that the author did achieve his purpose, which was to “have a better and deeper understanding of what the Old Testament is all about”. He succeeded.
