Review & Expositor

It is important to distinguish between the WORD of God, the word of God, and the words of God and not to identify the Bible too quickly as any of these things. The words of Job’s friend, Eliphaz, are not God’s words. Even Paul admits to stating his personal opinion on occasion. Thus, one must listen to the Bible regarding its nature instead of applying a priori definitions to it. When one does so, one finds an anthology containing tens, if not scores, of distinct genres, each requiring a distinct interpretive approach, so one could say that one can hear the word of God in them on different frequencies. The Bible is therefore not a monolith. It does not communicate God’s will unfiltered by the experience of the human beings who fill its pages and who authored it. The Bible can become God’s word for the reader who engages with it profoundly, for a prolonged period, and with wise hearts and open ears.

This essay reexamines Job 38:1–38, suggesting that the divine speeches may be interpreted not as rebuke but as an expression of God’s compassion. Engaging theological and literary insights, this study traces Job’s movement from isolation and anguish toward mystical communion with the cosmos. Grounding its interpretation in the nature and character of God, and in God’s ḥesed or steadfast love, this analysis argues that God’s response acknowledges Job’s suffering, affirms his belonging as a child of God, and reorients him within the vast and interconnected order of creation. Ultimately, God brings Job into the cosmos, where dust is transformed into a reflection of eternal light. Here, Job, and the reader, find hope within the intimate and eternal story of the Creator and creation.

Scholarship in the Psalms has not clearly defined either the Sitz im Leben or date of composition for Ps 33. Opinions range from designating its use in Israel’s congregational worship during the monarchy to a date of composition as late as the third-century BCE. This article analyzes the literary, thematic, form critical, canonical, and linguistic evidence for an exilic date of composition for Ps 33. It also proposes a fresh reading of the psalm from a context of forced migration. Accepting an exilic date for Ps 33 can serve to broaden understanding of how the psalms reflect the experience of the exile. The consensus that Ps 137 represents the only clearly exilic psalm, with its vengeful tone and resignation of hanging harps on riverside willows, could thus be challenged by the trusting worship of Ps 33 that asks for the “steadfast love of the Lord” to be upon the faithful exiles.

Traditional interpretations of the Annunciation emphasize the miraculous nature of Jesus’s conception with little attention to whether Mary even wanted to bear children. This article looks for traces of Mary’s reproductive choice in Luke’s gospel by re-reading Mary’s story from the social location of a woman who does not want to give birth. Drawing on feminist hermeneutics and personal experience, I begin by naming and making interpretive space for women who chose not to birth children. Second, I situate Mary within the broader historical context of women who resisted reproduction. Third, I question modern interpretive assumptions and reread Mary’s story, finding moments of reproductive choice in Mary’s response to Gabriel, her identification as a slave, her song of resistance, and her continued strife postpartum. Finally, I briefly explore another biblical woman who wished to refrain from childbirth to illustrate that Mary is not alone. This article concludes that the miraculous conception is ultimately an egregious (mis)conception. Mary is an unwilling participant in a divine reproductive plan that does not match her own.

This article offers a critical reexamination of Luke 5:17–26 using combined perspectives of empire studies and disability studies, emphasizing the paralyzed man as a subject of interpretation rather than only a foil to Jesus’s power and authority. Typical approaches focus on the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees or the theological idea of forgiving sins, which often marginalizes the disabled man further. In contrast, this article employs an informed imagination to reconstruct possible social, economic, and bodily conditions that might have influenced the man’s life within the hierarchical and oppressive framework of the Roman Empire. Three interpretive scenarios are suggested: impairment from birth leading to begging, injury at work in the stone-working economy, and paralysis linked to malnutrition from enslavement. Each scenario highlights the vulnerability of impaired bodies under imperial systems and challenges the assumption that healing was always a desirable or beneficial outcome. By resisting able-bodied interpretations that connect proximity to Jesus with an inevitable desire for a cure, this essay destabilizes traditional interpretive paths and emphasizes Luke’s narrative reshaping of the episode. The analysis ultimately aims to refocus interpretive attention on the humanity of the disabled character and to expand the hermeneutical possibilities of gospel healing stories.

In conventional readings, Luke 12:24-28 is a text that de-emphasizes material possessions and the anxiety they create in the lives of Christians. Against such an understanding, this article is an ecological re-reading of the text. Operating within the limits of ecological hermeneutics, the article argues that the text strongly emphasizes that God is the source of all creation on earth and loves these creations impartially. Equally, the text denotes the beauty that exists in God’s creation. In this way, the ecological thrust of the text emerges, tasking Christians to love all creations on earth and acknowledge their intrinsic beauty. This knowledge then will lead to a lessening of the abuse on creation by humans while also leading to actions that will mitigate ecological challenges under which the earth groans.

While male scribes were probably responsible for collecting Israel’s traditions and composing them in written form, this article argues that the material they gathered owes much to stories passed down by women. This may especially be true of stories in which women were either victimized, on the one hand, or heroic, on the other, as well as stories that include subtle or not-so-subtle humor at the expense of men in the story. Stories of heroic women and incompetent men were more likely to have been preserved among women but were so popularly known that scribes who compiled the national/theological traditions could not ignore them. The writer’s proposal is based primarily on an observational survey of women who played a delivering role in narrative texts rather than the more obvious signs of women’s contributions in Proverbs and the Song of Songs. The courageous actions of women often occurred at pivotal points in Israel’s history, often in counterpoint to the poor or ineffective leadership of men. In those wicked days, righteous women showed the way.

Based on a sermon about Matt 25:1–13, this article creatively re-examines the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids by attempting a sympathetic reading of the five “foolish” bridesmaids. It acknowledges the complex and multivalent nature of Jesus’s parables and the difficulty of settling on a single “right” interpretation. It seeks to read the parable on its own terms, rather than assuming an eschatological framework, and considers it in light of the larger context of the Gospel of Matthew in which themes of grace, mercy, hospitality, and welcome have already emerged. Rather than upholding individual eschatological preparedness as the goal, this parable may instead invite readers to put themselves in the shoes of the “foolish” bridesmaids to consider how the divine values of mercy, compassion, and mutual care might shape their lives today.

Following the death of President Jimmy Carter, the congregation of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, confronted the liminal space of grief after decades of welcoming visitors who came each Sunday from around the world to be part of the president’s Sunday School teaching. On the Sunday following Carter’s funeral and interment on January 9, 2025, this guest sermon, here revised, drew upon John’s text of Mary’s anointing of Jesus’s feet and his subsequent washing of the disciples’ feet as both a recognition of the radical bridge-building between life, death, and new life in which Carter and the congregation participated, and the image of love as the new “currency” that enables the Christian community to co-create new dwelling spaces of connection and healing for the community. Continuing on a Johannine theme of the Word becoming flesh, the sermon concludes with an invitation to the congregation to come forward for an anointing of their feet with water for the journey before them.