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Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament
For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation." -Daniel 4:34 (Holman CSB)
Everlasting Dominion is the magnum opus of the greatly esteemed Dr. Eugene H. Merrill, a thoroughly researched theology of the Old Testament based on decades of study and teaching experience. Taking a high view of Scripture as the inspired, authoritative Word of God, Merrill guides readers to a better understanding of the nature of Old Testament theology and employs a well-balanced method of laying bare the Scripture so that its profound, lifechanging truths can be better apprehended and applied.
682 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2006
27 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Eugene H. Merrill
32 books10 followersEugene H. Merrill is a respected American Old Testament scholar known for his deep expertise in biblical studies and Semitic languages. He served for decades as Distinguished Professor of Old Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, where he taught from 1975 until his retirement in 2013. He also holds a distinguished faculty position at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Merrill earned advanced degrees from Bob Jones University, New York University, and Columbia University, and completed post-doctoral research at Tyndale House, Cambridge. A former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, he is widely recognized for his academic contributions and faithful scholarship.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 17, 2009
Anyone who knows me would know that I would obviously love a book entitled "everlasting dominion" since the topic of "dominion" has gripped me so much in the past year or so. Eugene Merrill takes Genesis 1:26-28 as the "interpretive key" of the Old Testament (and even the entire Bible!), saying that man being made in God's image and God's commission for mankind to take dominion over the earth are the central themes of the Old Testament--and I think he's right! Throught the 600+ pages of this book he shows how these themes play out throughout the Old Testament and how they are fulfilled in the New Testament. It is heavy reading at times, but well worth it.
I applaud Merrill for his stances on the innerancy of Scripture and other evangelical cornerstones that seem to be less and less popular in the scholarly world. I do wish that he included more application alongside the Biblical truths he was presenting.
For anyone interested in deeper theological issues of the Old Testament, this book is a worthwhile resource to have as a reference tool or to simply read all the way through.
I applaud Merrill for his stances on the innerancy of Scripture and other evangelical cornerstones that seem to be less and less popular in the scholarly world. I do wish that he included more application alongside the Biblical truths he was presenting.
For anyone interested in deeper theological issues of the Old Testament, this book is a worthwhile resource to have as a reference tool or to simply read all the way through.
May 15, 2014
An absolute masterpiece of Old Testament (dispensational) theology. Merrill takes the Creation Mandate as the central text and theme of the entire OT, then unfolds the Biblical storyline as a narrative of how God set out to redeem His people to be His image-bearers and vice-regents over all creation. Since Merrill takes a book-by-book approach, this theology is well-suited to be read alongside the OT. This is how I used it, following Merrill's order so I could make the most of his insights. In the future I will reach for it often as a reference tool.
June 8, 2017
Dr. Merrill presents a highly readable, cohesive Old Testament Theology. Students of every stripe we benefit from the reading of Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament.
March 29, 2015
In Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), Eugene H. Merrill sets out to provide a theology of the Old Testament which represents the O.T. as a consistent whole that has God as its ultimate source. As such, he supports a high view of biblical inspiration as verbal: “The word of God to the prophets was verbal; and what they spoke and wrote, therefore, was also verbal. The means by which the verbalizing was effected is never disclosed, nor is it necessary to know. The point is that the prophetic word, the highest form of divine revelation, was recognized at the time to be the words of God, a view maintained by virtually unanimous consensus in Jewish and Christian tradition until the inroads of modern criticism.”
Insofar as Merrill is a Christian writing about the Old Testament's theology, this creates a dilemma in regard to the role the New Testament is allowed to play in his interpretation. Merrill acknowledges this from the get go:
“Old Testament theology is the study of biblical theology that employs the methods of that discipline to the Old Testament alone while being aware of the limitations inherent in not addressing the New Testament witness in any comprehensive way. This delimitation can be justified on the grounds that the Old Testament speaks its own message, one that is legitimate and authoritative in every sense of the term even if, from the Christian viewpoint, its message is not ultimately complete.”
As such, his work attempts to focus on what the Old Testament says on its own, though he occasionally appeals to New Testament ideas as a means of providing an additional witness to his interpretation.
Merrill tends to provide basic level interpretation in the canonical order of the Old Testament books. As such, little of his exegesis is particularly creative. However, he does have one unique idea which comes up throughout the book and indeed inspired the title-- the idea that man was made by God as an intermediary for God's dominion over the world:
“The crowning work of creation was the appearance of mankind on the sixth day (Gen. 1:26–28). He is said to be in the image and likeness of God, but the grammar permits and theology favors the idea that he was created as his image and likeness, that is, as God's representative on earth... [This passage] is also the clearest expression of the divine purpose in creation. After all things else had been made and put into their several positions of function and interrelationship, the Lord said, 'Let Us make man [as] Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule' (Gen. 1:26). The significance of this for communicating a (if not the) major theme of Old Testament theology cannot be overstated, and the fact that it is the first divinely articulated expression of the reason for man's existence makes it doubly significant. What is lacking apparently after the whole cosmos has been spoken into existence is its management, a caretaker as it were who will govern it all according to the will of the Creator. He could have done it himself without mediation, but for reasons never revealed in the sacred record, God elected to reign through a subordinate, a surrogate king responsible only to him.”
Merrill explains what had been lost in this divine intention after the Fall: “No longer did man have dominion over all things; instead, he abdicated his role as sovereign and worshipped what he should have ruled.” However, he still highlights partial fulfillments of the divine plan even after the Fall, such as in the Israelite monarchy:
“The creation mandate that mankind should 'be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it' and 'rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth' (Gen. 1:28) finds tangible expression even if only in a highly preliminary and anticipatory manner. David and his dynastic successors never exhibited this kind of universal dominion, of course, but the limited success they did enjoy, especially under Solomon (cf. 1 Kings 4:20–34), was a foretaste of the splendor, glory, and power of his descendants yet to come at the end of human history.”
Of course, this idea of human dominion as a vice-regent of God would only find its final fulfillment in Christ, the second Adam and the second David:
“If paradise was lost at the fall, it will be regained at the re-creation, not least in the restoration of man's glory as the vice-regent of the King of kings.”
The book seems to go out of its way to contrast the wild speculation of liberal theology, resulting in a work which is so straight-forward as to be dull. This is by no means always the case with Merrill's writings, as his Historical Survey of the Old Testament was one of the most interesting books I read as a new Christian. In Everlasting Dominion, however, where skeptical scholarship always assumes that the text is hiding something, Merrill takes it at face value. The result is a theology of the Old Testament which is more grounded, but that also often fails to soar to the heights that the text might allow for. Instead of elucidation and theologizing, Merrill tends to resort to extended (and I do mean extended) summary of the Hebrew canon.
The one major exception to this tendency is in Merrill's discussion of dominion, which we discussed above in detail. However, more work could certainly have been done on this topic, particularly in regard to how Jesus brings the idea to its fulfillment. Since it is Merrill's goal to explain the Old Testament with as little light from the New as possible, it is difficult to fault him for this. But it's also hard to fault the reader for wanting more when he reads tantalizing sections like this:
“What we propose in the following comments is done with a great deal of tentativeness since, as far as we can determine, we are virtually alone in making the case that Jesus, in his earthly ministry, frequently performed miraculous works to demonstrate not just his full deity but also his role as Urmensch, the second Adam who came to display in character and life what God had intended as the ideal for the whole human race. Without pursuing the biblical arguments for a full-blown Christology that is sensitive to both his divine and human natures, let it be said that there is universal consensus that the New Testament presents Jesus not only as God but also as perfect man.”
That being said, it does seem like an exaggeration to claim that Genesis 1:26 is the key text to understanding Old Testament theology. That it is a major theme, particularly in relation to its underemphasis by most biblical commentators, does not by any means strain credulity. It also seems to be in the back of the mind of many New Testament authors who emphasize restoration of the Kingdom of God involving our reigning with Christ and inheriting the eternal life and dominion over the world which was originally connected with our Edenic charge.
In the final analysis, Everlasting Dominion provides a good straight-forward overview of the Old Testament, but simply doesn't provide enough insight to warrant its nearly 700 pages.
Insofar as Merrill is a Christian writing about the Old Testament's theology, this creates a dilemma in regard to the role the New Testament is allowed to play in his interpretation. Merrill acknowledges this from the get go:
“Old Testament theology is the study of biblical theology that employs the methods of that discipline to the Old Testament alone while being aware of the limitations inherent in not addressing the New Testament witness in any comprehensive way. This delimitation can be justified on the grounds that the Old Testament speaks its own message, one that is legitimate and authoritative in every sense of the term even if, from the Christian viewpoint, its message is not ultimately complete.”
As such, his work attempts to focus on what the Old Testament says on its own, though he occasionally appeals to New Testament ideas as a means of providing an additional witness to his interpretation.
Merrill tends to provide basic level interpretation in the canonical order of the Old Testament books. As such, little of his exegesis is particularly creative. However, he does have one unique idea which comes up throughout the book and indeed inspired the title-- the idea that man was made by God as an intermediary for God's dominion over the world:
“The crowning work of creation was the appearance of mankind on the sixth day (Gen. 1:26–28). He is said to be in the image and likeness of God, but the grammar permits and theology favors the idea that he was created as his image and likeness, that is, as God's representative on earth... [This passage] is also the clearest expression of the divine purpose in creation. After all things else had been made and put into their several positions of function and interrelationship, the Lord said, 'Let Us make man [as] Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule' (Gen. 1:26). The significance of this for communicating a (if not the) major theme of Old Testament theology cannot be overstated, and the fact that it is the first divinely articulated expression of the reason for man's existence makes it doubly significant. What is lacking apparently after the whole cosmos has been spoken into existence is its management, a caretaker as it were who will govern it all according to the will of the Creator. He could have done it himself without mediation, but for reasons never revealed in the sacred record, God elected to reign through a subordinate, a surrogate king responsible only to him.”
Merrill explains what had been lost in this divine intention after the Fall: “No longer did man have dominion over all things; instead, he abdicated his role as sovereign and worshipped what he should have ruled.” However, he still highlights partial fulfillments of the divine plan even after the Fall, such as in the Israelite monarchy:
“The creation mandate that mankind should 'be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it' and 'rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth' (Gen. 1:28) finds tangible expression even if only in a highly preliminary and anticipatory manner. David and his dynastic successors never exhibited this kind of universal dominion, of course, but the limited success they did enjoy, especially under Solomon (cf. 1 Kings 4:20–34), was a foretaste of the splendor, glory, and power of his descendants yet to come at the end of human history.”
Of course, this idea of human dominion as a vice-regent of God would only find its final fulfillment in Christ, the second Adam and the second David:
“If paradise was lost at the fall, it will be regained at the re-creation, not least in the restoration of man's glory as the vice-regent of the King of kings.”
The book seems to go out of its way to contrast the wild speculation of liberal theology, resulting in a work which is so straight-forward as to be dull. This is by no means always the case with Merrill's writings, as his Historical Survey of the Old Testament was one of the most interesting books I read as a new Christian. In Everlasting Dominion, however, where skeptical scholarship always assumes that the text is hiding something, Merrill takes it at face value. The result is a theology of the Old Testament which is more grounded, but that also often fails to soar to the heights that the text might allow for. Instead of elucidation and theologizing, Merrill tends to resort to extended (and I do mean extended) summary of the Hebrew canon.
The one major exception to this tendency is in Merrill's discussion of dominion, which we discussed above in detail. However, more work could certainly have been done on this topic, particularly in regard to how Jesus brings the idea to its fulfillment. Since it is Merrill's goal to explain the Old Testament with as little light from the New as possible, it is difficult to fault him for this. But it's also hard to fault the reader for wanting more when he reads tantalizing sections like this:
“What we propose in the following comments is done with a great deal of tentativeness since, as far as we can determine, we are virtually alone in making the case that Jesus, in his earthly ministry, frequently performed miraculous works to demonstrate not just his full deity but also his role as Urmensch, the second Adam who came to display in character and life what God had intended as the ideal for the whole human race. Without pursuing the biblical arguments for a full-blown Christology that is sensitive to both his divine and human natures, let it be said that there is universal consensus that the New Testament presents Jesus not only as God but also as perfect man.”
That being said, it does seem like an exaggeration to claim that Genesis 1:26 is the key text to understanding Old Testament theology. That it is a major theme, particularly in relation to its underemphasis by most biblical commentators, does not by any means strain credulity. It also seems to be in the back of the mind of many New Testament authors who emphasize restoration of the Kingdom of God involving our reigning with Christ and inheriting the eternal life and dominion over the world which was originally connected with our Edenic charge.
In the final analysis, Everlasting Dominion provides a good straight-forward overview of the Old Testament, but simply doesn't provide enough insight to warrant its nearly 700 pages.
January 10, 2025
I have to say Dr. Eugene Merrill is an absolutely phenomenal scholar.
I don’t usually gravitate toward hefty academic textbooks, but I loved this one so much that I’m already diving into his other work, Kingdom of Priests. Too often, books like these lean toward replacement theology or tend to vilify Israel, but Merrill avoids that completely. His approach to interpretation and the resulting theology is consistent and refreshingly fair.
I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Merrill a couple of times, and he’s incredibly kind, grounded, and humble. Getting to know him personally only makes reading his work that much more enjoyable!
Honestly, no single book has taught me more or challenged my thinking on theology more than this one. It’s extremely well written, covers the material from multiple angles, and ensures readers grasp the full context of the information presented.
I’d highly recommend this book to anyone interested in digging deeper into the Old Testament or theology as a whole!
I don’t usually gravitate toward hefty academic textbooks, but I loved this one so much that I’m already diving into his other work, Kingdom of Priests. Too often, books like these lean toward replacement theology or tend to vilify Israel, but Merrill avoids that completely. His approach to interpretation and the resulting theology is consistent and refreshingly fair.
I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Merrill a couple of times, and he’s incredibly kind, grounded, and humble. Getting to know him personally only makes reading his work that much more enjoyable!
Honestly, no single book has taught me more or challenged my thinking on theology more than this one. It’s extremely well written, covers the material from multiple angles, and ensures readers grasp the full context of the information presented.
I’d highly recommend this book to anyone interested in digging deeper into the Old Testament or theology as a whole!
February 24, 2022
A scholarly and readable volume. Merrill demonstrates an expert's handling of the OT and the theology it conveys. This belongs on the shelf of every Christian minister. It covers the entire OT in a clear and understandable manner. It brings the entire OT together with one coherent theme.
May 13, 2021
A super helpful book if you want to do a deep dive into the Old Testament
April 16, 2016
Eugene H. Merrill is a seasoned scholarly voice on the Old Testament. Merrill is distinguished professor emeritus of Old Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary and the author of numerous books, including Kingdom of Priests: A History of Old Testament Israel, The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament (with Mark E. Rooker and Michael A. Grisanti), and several notable Old Testament commentaries. Still, the pinnacle of Merrill’s scholarship has been widely attributed to Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament.
Everlasting Dominion is divided into five major sections: (1) God – His Person and Work, (2) Mankind – The Image of God, (3) The Kingdom of God, (4) The Prophets and the Kingdom, and (5) Human Reflection on the Ways of God. Each major section of the book encompasses a mountain of detailed reflection on the Old Testament, and Merrill tends to largely follow a canonical ordering therein. The overall organization of the book is also helpful for reference and research, and the table of contents provides a rather detailed outline to assist in this effort.
The opening section is among the best in the book. It is here that Merrill carefully delineates the person and work of God as revealed in the Old Testament, including the nature, character, revelation, work, and purpose of God. Merrill’s treatment of the nature and character of God is worth the cover price of the book alone. It will quickly and consistently connect your head and heart in worship and adoration before God. Merrill is similarly effective in presenting a theology of the Old Testament throughout the book. Some readers will disagree with the dispensational underbelly of the book, but the undeniable commitment of the author to the inspiration and authority of the Bible should leave such concerns in the dust.
Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament by Eugene H. Merrill is a welcomed volume that follows in the train of worthy works that have preceded it. Everlasting Dominion is Old Testament theology done right! It is both engaging and informative, and written by one who has labored rigorously in a lifetime of prayer and research on the subject. Disagreements are certain to arise due to the dispensational presuppositions seen throughout, but the view of God that Merrill presents is worth every moment of the journey. This is a book that will connect your head and heart in all the proper places. I recommend it with joy and look forward to referencing it often!
I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Everlasting Dominion is divided into five major sections: (1) God – His Person and Work, (2) Mankind – The Image of God, (3) The Kingdom of God, (4) The Prophets and the Kingdom, and (5) Human Reflection on the Ways of God. Each major section of the book encompasses a mountain of detailed reflection on the Old Testament, and Merrill tends to largely follow a canonical ordering therein. The overall organization of the book is also helpful for reference and research, and the table of contents provides a rather detailed outline to assist in this effort.
The opening section is among the best in the book. It is here that Merrill carefully delineates the person and work of God as revealed in the Old Testament, including the nature, character, revelation, work, and purpose of God. Merrill’s treatment of the nature and character of God is worth the cover price of the book alone. It will quickly and consistently connect your head and heart in worship and adoration before God. Merrill is similarly effective in presenting a theology of the Old Testament throughout the book. Some readers will disagree with the dispensational underbelly of the book, but the undeniable commitment of the author to the inspiration and authority of the Bible should leave such concerns in the dust.
Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament by Eugene H. Merrill is a welcomed volume that follows in the train of worthy works that have preceded it. Everlasting Dominion is Old Testament theology done right! It is both engaging and informative, and written by one who has labored rigorously in a lifetime of prayer and research on the subject. Disagreements are certain to arise due to the dispensational presuppositions seen throughout, but the view of God that Merrill presents is worth every moment of the journey. This is a book that will connect your head and heart in all the proper places. I recommend it with joy and look forward to referencing it often!
I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
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