Cowley Publications
Pages: 224
Trim: 5¾ x 8½
978-1-56101-197-1 • Paperback • January 2001 • $17.95 • (£13.99)
978-1-56101-336-4 • eBook • January 2001 • $16.99 • (£12.99)
ELLEN F. DAVIS is Associate Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School. She has previously taught at Union Seminary, Yale Divinity School, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Her other books include a theological commentary on Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, and Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition.
Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 Pain and Praise: The Psalms as Common Prayer
Chapter 3 Improving Our Aim: Praying the Psalms
Chapter 4 “With My Tears I Melt My Mattress”: The Psalms of Lament
Chapter 5 “But Surely Not Those!”: The Cursing Psalms
Chapter 6 “Lamenting into Dancing”: The Psalms of Praise
Part 7 The Cost of Love
Chapter 8 “I've Got to Turn Aside”: The Burning Bush
Chapter 9 “Take Your Son”: The Binding of Isaac
Chapter 10 “The One Whom My Soul Loves”: The Song of Songs
Part 11 The Art of Living Well
Chapter 12 Wise Ignorance: The Book of Proverbs
Chapter 13 Simple Gifts: The Book of Ecclesiastes
Chapter 14 The Sufferer's Wisdom: The Book of Job
Part 15 Habits of the Heart
Chapter 16 Desirable Discipline: Proverbs 8
Chapter 17 A Fool for Love: Exodus 33
Chapter 18 “Like Grass I'm Dried Up”: Psalm 102
Chapter 19 Voluntary Heartbreak: Psalm 51
Chapter 20 Serving in the Shadows: Isaiah 49
Part 21 Torah of the Earth
Chapter 22 “Good-Faith Springs Up from the Earth”: An Essay in Biblical Ecology
Chapter 23 Greed and Prophecy: Numbers 11
Ellen Davis continues the core task of biblical exposition for the sake of the church. . . . Through it all Ellen Davis utilizes her considerable gifts of sensitivity to the text, attentiveness to the spirit at work in the text, and care for the church that it may grow closer to the God given in the text. Of special interest to me was her fresh reading of the Song of Solomon, which offers ‘the ecstatic aspect of the love that is the main subject of the whole Bible.' Readers will dip in at any point in this book and be invited to thinking and praying again and obeying differently and freely.
— Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary
Ellen Davis' work in this dazzling book can be compared to that of an exceptional rock climber putting up new routes on the world's most challenging walls. Combining ease with skill and nerve with artistry, she tackles some of the most difficult portions of the Old Testament. Professor Davis is working on the razor's edge of current hermeneutical practice, but she knows exactly how to speak to the ordinary Christian in a sparkling prose style. If you want to be up to date on the very latest developments in postmodern biblical interpretation and at the same time be thrilled and delighted with rich insights into the life of faith, this is the book to have right now.
— Fleming Rutledge
Ellen Davis has recovered a long-lost theological genre: brilliant, probing, scholarly interpretation of the Bible that flows into proclamation and challenges us to return to the text itself in a continuing engagement with the God who shares our pain.
— Brevard S. Childs