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Samson and Delilah. Well-known biblical figures in a tale of deception, betrayal and a haircut. Or is there more to the tale than this?There is, in fact, a good deal more, as J. Cheryl Exum demonstrates in her wide-ranging collection of essays. Far from being a simple story, the tale in Judges 13-16 about Samson and his adventures, culminating in his fatal liaison with Delilah, is a subtle, nuanced and highly complex narrative with an elaborate literary structure, a sophisticated theological programme, and an ambitious and problematic androcentric agenda. It is, moreover, a story that lives on in literature, art, music and even Hollywood films.The eleven essays brought together in this volume investigate the Samson story from a diversity of critical perspectives and in a variety of its afterlives. Both Samson and Delilah are characters of many facets, as these essays reveal, and Judges 13-16 emerges from this investigation as a story that encourages and supports rather than resists multiple, often incompatible, modes of reading it.

What would it look like to be queer in the time of Abraham and Sarah? What is normative and what is deviant in their stories? What does this have to do with queer lives today?In Ancestral Queerness, Gil Rosenberg uses a careful comparative method to develop a cross-cultural queer category ('Queer'). He applies this category to Abraham and Sarah and argues that, Abraham and Sarah may usefully be regarded as 'Queer'.Rosenberg's comparisons draw on a variety of contemporary queer stories, scholarship, and theories. These include a lesbian mother trying to support her partner and newborn daughter, Australian polyamorous families, Lee Edelman's figure of the Child, and gay men building families through surrogacy.These comparisons lead Rosenberg to surprising new interpretations of several key passages in Genesis 11-21. For example, he argues that Abraham wants to hide his marriage to Sarah because their relationship is a queer one, and that Sarah may not actually be wanting a biological child. Rosenberg also highlights the combination of normative and deviant elements in Abraham's strategies for obtaining an heir, and the role of ethnic and class difference in Abraham's and Sarah's efforts to become more normative.Bold in its conclusions but careful and precise in its method, Ancestral Queerness breaks new ground by developing a queer theory applicable to diverse cultures, revealing the bias in previous scholarship on Abraham and Sarah, and opening up new paths of interpretation in their narratives.

The study of biblical masculinities is now a clearly recognizable discipline in critical biblical gender studies. This book, the third in a series of SPP volumes that include Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond (ed. Ovidiu Creang¿, 2010) and Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded (ed. Ovidiu Creang¿ and Peter-Ben Smit, 2014), takes stock of recent methodological and thematic developments, while introducing fresh new questions, expanding traditional approaches, and adding new texts to the corpus of masculinities in the Hebrew Bible. The volume's introduction (Ovidiu Creang¿) celebrates the rich palette of approaches and disciplinary intersections that now characterize the study of Hebrew Bible masculinities, while calling attention to understudied topics. The next thirteen chapters dig deep into the methodological building-blocks underpinning biblical masculinity (Stephen Wilson); the theoretically essential distinction between queer and non-queer masculinities (Gil Rosenberg); the often-neglected yet essential representation of God's masculinity (David J.A. Clines); the competing masculinities of God, Pharaoh, and Moses in historical and lesbian perspective (Caralie Focht and Richard Purcell); Queen Jezebel's performance of masculinity (Hilary Lipka); Priestly and Deuteronomic fantasies of male perfection (Sandra Jacobs); the problem-ridden masculinity of Moses (Amy Kalmanofsky); the rhetoric of 'queen-making' in the prophetic literature (Susan E. Haddox); Jonah's homosocial masculinity (Rhiannon Graybill); the scribal masculinity of Daniel (Brian C. DiPalma); the ephemeral masculinity of mortal men (Milena Kirova); the masculine agencies in the Song of Songs (Martti Nissinen); and the intertwining of money and masculinity in the Book of Proverbs (Kelly Murphy). In the final chapter, Stuart Macwilliam reflects on methodological opportunities, thematic expansions, and a future direction for biblical masculinities.

The books of 1-2 Chronicles, though ostensibly a history work recounting the past, is in reality a challenge to its fourth-century Jewish audience in Babylonia to make a vital decision about their future. They are presented with the choice of remaining in exile, where they have been born, or of uprooting themselves and travelling to their ancestral but unknown land.By introducing unique accounts of exile, such as that of the Reubenite leader Beerah (1 Chron. 5), and by reinterpreting familiar accounts of forced migration, such as the Babylonian exile of 'all Israel', the Chronicler reveals the current state of Israel in exile. As he looks into the future, he inserts pleas for restoration on the lips of Hebrew heroes such as David and Hezekiah, along with stories of transformation, like Manasseh's return from humiliating captivity, to educate his readers about their role in completing the process of restoration for all Israel.Since the exile meant Jerusalem's reduction, the end of the Davidic monarchy, and the scattering of tribal Israel, restoration would mean 'all Israel' reunited in Jerusalem under the levitical priesthood in worship at the rebuilt temple. Cyrus's decree, inspired by Yahweh, had commanded that all God's people 'go up', but Second Temple Israel had stalled somewhere between exile and restoration. Therefore, the Chronicler urges all Diaspora Israel to return home.Previous studies of the exile-restoration theme in segments of Chronicles (mainly 2 Chron. 36) and in Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah have led to the distorted view that the Chronicler is proclaiming victory over exile. Heard on his own terms, the Chronicler is rather dissatisfied with Israel's current state of restoration, optimistic that reunion in Jerusalem will conclude the exile, and adamant that 'all Israel' must take responsibility for the nation's sin and judgment-and restoration.

The fourth Balaam oracle (Numbers 24.17-19) appears in four separate Dead Sea Scrolls. But how it is used and understood remains puzzling and challenging.All four scrolls agree that the biblical text is a living artifact and endorse its authority. But they disagree on what it may mean to the audience of their own day. They adjust, rephrase and rework the biblical text according to their own needs and for the benefit of their audience.Following the twists and turns in this process of interpretation and rewriting has two benefits: first, we become more sensitized to the complexity of the processes by which the scriptural text came into being and to the fact that this process did not have a clear-cut end in mind. Rather, it is thanks to a constant reworking of the scriptural text that it remains alive for its readers.Second, in following closely the process of reinterpretation of this particular text we gain a better understanding of the world of Qumran, of the communication strategy of the Scrolls, and of some of their key theological concepts. In particular, Qumran beliefs about a messiah become more vividly tangible.