vrijdag 25 januari 2013

Review of: Timothy Ashley, The Book of Numbers (NICOT), Eerdmans, 1993

Timothy Ashley, The Book of Numbers (NICOT), Eerdmans, 1993.


TIMOTHY ASHLEY, The Book of Numbers. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993. 667 pp. $34.99 (cloth).

Biblical interpretation these days often makes a distinction between a hermeneutics of consent and a hermeneutics of suspicion. Timothy Ashley's The Book of Numbers is an exercise largely in a hermeneutics of consent as it comments its way through the thirty-six chapters of the book of Numbers. Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible, recounts the journey of the twelve tribes of Israel from Mount Sinai to the edge of the promised land of Canaan. Ashley believes we cannot know much about the redactional prehistory of Numbers and so chooses to focus on the final form of the text.

The stated goal of this Christian evangelical commentary series is to strike a balance between technical, in-depth information about the biblical text and homiletical-devotional suggestions on how to hear the biblical writer clearly today. Ashley's 667-page commentary on Numbers is certainly strong on the side of technical information. The book is an impressive collation of the opinions of numerous previous commentators on specific textual problems throughout Numbers. This close attention to specific texts and phrases, however, means that less attention is given to broader interpretational issues and how the texts of Numbers might be appropriated by contemporary readers.

After an introduction and a twenty-two-page bibliography, the commentary moves systematically through the book of Numbers with Ashley's translation from the Hebrew and an often phrase-by-phrase exposition of the text. The exposition and numerous footnotes pay detailed attention to matters of syntax, textcriticism, word studies, history, geography, parallel Old Testament material and some ancient Near Eastern comparative texts (e.g., the Deir 'Allah texts and the figure of Balaam in Numbers 22-24). The underlying motivation that runs through much of this detailed exposition is the desire to show that the text makes sense, that literary or interpretational tensions and bumps in the text can be explained as meaningful or reasonable.

This explaining away of textual difficulties, however, sometimes stretches too far. For example, Ashley's attempt to explain why in Numbers 12 Miriam is punished and Aaron is not when both seem equally culpable is less than convincing (p. 227). A question could also be raised about the way Ashley uses a translational sleight of hand to sidestep the difficulty of accounting for the arbitrariness of God's anger toward an obedient Balaam in Numbers 22:22 (p. 454). Apart from these specifics, two larger issues are Ashley's view of the overall structure of Numbers and his proposal for the overall theme of the book. Ashley presents two different proposals for the structure of Numbers, one based on geographical markers in the text-Sinai, Kadesh-barnea, and the plains of Moab (p. 2)-and a second different structure based on three themes-orientation, disorientation, and new orientation (p. 8). Setting aside the problem of one commentary suggesting two different structures for the same biblical book, I have argued in another work (The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch [Chico, Calif., 19851) that the heart of the structure and movement of Numbers is defined by the two nearly identical census lists of the twelve tribes of Israel in chapter 1 and chapter 26. These two census lists divide the book into the story of the old wilderness generation who will eventually die in the wilderness (Numbers 1-25) and the story of the new generation who have the hope of entering the promised land of Canaan (Numbers 26-36).

The issue of structure also relates to Ashley's proposal for the overall theme of Numbers, namely, that "exact obedience to God is crucial" (p. ix). For Ashley, Numbers' primary concern is the imperative demand for human obedience to God. But the focus on the two-generation structure of Numbers would suggest that the ultimate concern of Numbers is a declarative announcement of God's faithfulness to promises made to Israel in spite of a past generation's inability to obey: "Your little ones . . . I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have despised" (Numbers 14:31). Numbers is primarily a book of hope for a new generation rather than a stickler for obedient exactness. In spite of these reservations, a reader of Numbers will find much help in this extensive commentary by Professor Ashley.

DENNIS T. OLSON,
Princeton Theological Seminary.

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