Robert Wiliamson Jr.’s The Forgotten Books of the Bible: Recovering the Five Scrolls for Today (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2018) offers a clear, deeply informed and, most of all, a profoundly humane guided tour for five little attended to books of the Old Testament. For example, the book explains, for the new reader of Ruth, the practice of Leverite marriage in the ancient world, bizarre and abhorrent as it is to modern sensibility. He gives insight to the experienced reader, too; though I have preached through the book of Ruth twice, he gave me deeper insight into the way that Ruth, Naomi and Boaz use the Levitire marriage to bring about a happy outcome.
Williamson brings out the nourishing food of his deep scholarship, but never to shows off. He uses the tools of Hebrew vocabulary to show how the speaker in Ecclesiastes shows the futility of pursing gain in life, but the possibility of enjoying our share of the good things (128). Getting ahead is as futile as expecting rivers to fill the sea or the sun to gain on its work of rising and setting. Yet the flow of the rivers and movement of the sun can be enjoyed in their proper share. “If we value human existence only in terms of gain left over at life’s end, we must conclude that all of our hearing and seeing and speaking has been pointless” (133). We enjoy the share of life given in the moment or season. Rather than dry word study, the book offers the deep wisdom of scripture.
Its shortcomings are that of a good book; it leaves the reader wanting more. I longed for explicit connection to the New Testament. Williamson does a good job of offering his social reading, without dogmatically insisting upon one modern application. I would have like to see him reach past progressive observations to see him engage a conservative or libertarian viewpoint in the text. Or perhaps best of all, scripture could check all materialistic tendencies, no matter the political orientation. The book is useful for preachers and lay people; useful to help us engage scripture ourselves.