Book four of the Herein is Love series by Nancy Ganz An Old Testament Commentary For CHILDREN. They, the whole set, is amazing. A way to make these, sometimes hard to understand but important things accessible for children. And time after time adults tell us how amazed they are about what they learn. Instructing us all like little children is the way to go.
Nancy Ganz has spent the last twenty years in her native land of Canada, helping her husband, Dr. Richard Ganz, in church-planting work and home-schooling their four daughters. She received her formal theological training from the University of Toronto prior to her conversion to Christ at L'Abri in the Netherlands. However, it has been the many years of Bible study since that time which has produced her Herein is Love commentaries on the Old Testament. Currently, most of her time is spent studying the Scriptures, writing various books, and taking long walks along the country roads and woodland paths near her home.
First commentary read aloud with kids, did get rather repetitive but still good introduction to Numbers and my kids remembered so much of it. Read with ages 7/8-14 and there was something for everyone. I would get others in the series if I wanted to read more in OT with them, but we have read most of the other books of the Bible this series covers more recently. As with most of our homeschool books we read them slowly, so we covered about a chapter a week spread over 3-4 days and reading the Bible’s sections covered as well. So this took about half a year to go through which was perfect.
Note: Chapters 21 and 22 narrate the seducing of the Israelite men by the Midianite women sent by King Balak and Balaam. It goes into some detail about the adultery, Baal worship, and Phinehas' kill-two-birds-with-one-stone spearing of an Israelite leader and the woman he brought into his tent for adultery.
These chapters can be skipped seamlessly for younger children, if desired. They were forthright about Israel's sin, and good for older students and adults.
This commentary series is rather mature, and I don't know what the target age group is, but I personally wouldn't use it with anyone under 10.
I read this as background to the Bible stories I was reading to my son in school. I read him a few passages of this book, but mostly I just read it for me, to help me understand. It had so much great information and made me think about things in ways I hadn’t before.
It’s a children’s commentary but was too much for my seven year old. Might be better for ages 10 and up.
Another from her series that I enjoyed. There are some statements just like the exodus one that I would prefer if she explained why she said what she did. The statements were not far fetched and may be explained by simple citations. She chose not to and so it left me assuming it is simply her opinion. Overall I felt it was valuable in expounding on the scriptures and bringing it to life.