Exodus

by Ronald E. Clements

Dr Clements' volume, like others in the series, contains the text in the New English Bible translation, divided into sections, with introductory material preceding, and a commentary directly following each section of the text. Dr Clements discusses the content and historical background of the book, and the theories about the authorship of Exodus, identifying briefly the four main sources. Although the content of Exodus is largely devoted to the narrative of the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, Dr Clements treats the book as a truly religious work, in which history and faith are inseparably woven together.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 1972

About the author

Ronald E. Clements is the best known Baptist scholar of the Old Testament in Europe at the present time. Currently the Davidson Professor of Old Testament at King's College in the University of London, he earned his degrees at Spurgeon's College in London; Christ's College, Cambridge; and the University of Sheffield, where he received his Ph.D. in 1961. After lecturing seven years at the University of Edinburgh, he spent 1967-83 as a lecturer at Cambridge University. An ordained Baptist minister in England since 1956, he has written more than a dozen significant books on the Old Testament.
For more, see Andy Goodliff's information page on RE Clements.

Reviews

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really enjoying these Cambridge commentaries, which, while on the old side, really provide a background on the early books of the Bible that I'm lacking.

In this case, it's Exodus, or as I like to call it, God vs Pharoah in a struggle to determine who really was God. That's the heart of the book, really--yes, Moses' people are freed, but is also establishes once and for all that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the supreme ruler of all, and no man, no matter what he claims on Earth, can be God.

But I'm digressing a bit.

This commentary does an amazing job of showing how the various sources of Exodus come together to form the whole that we know, including how the "final" source, P, added the older traditions (E and J) after theirs, in an odd doubling an repetition that we also saw in Genesis.

Theologically, I don't think Clements dug into the idea of free will versus the hand of God as strongly as he could have, but I really enjoyed the way in which he put things into historical context, such as showing how the mobile temple in the desert was entirely too fancy to be practical so it's clearly modeled after Solomon's temple instead. That's the kind of thing I want to see from a commentary. This was a great, short addition to my knowledge of Exodus.