God, Neighbor, Empire

Always provocative and insightful, Walter Brueggemann brilliantly helps us see how the ancient text has stunning implications for how we think and live today. His deep love of God, Scripture, and humanity reverberates throughout this incisive exploration of God’s excessive faithfulness.

~Tremper Longman III, Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies, Westmont College

In a society that commoditizes nearly all aspects of life, Walter Brueggemann presses Scripture’s summons to a neighborliness attuned to the well-being of the human community and the ecology of creation. God, Neighbor, Empire sets its compass to truths from ancient Israel, but it is a map for finding our way in a contemporary world where ‘liberty and justice for all’ is often hard to find.

~Samuel E. Balentine, Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Old Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Brueggemann’s God, Neighbor, Empire is a stirring account of the various ways in which the Old Testament ‘is offered as an alternative to the imperial narrative that dominates ordinary imagination’—both in ancient times and in the present. As always, one does not need to agree with every Brueggemann reading of the biblical text in order to find him a stimulating and helpful contributor to our understanding of some important themes of biblical theology overall, and of the ways that this theology should shape our imagination, our desire, and our practice, rather than merely reflect them.

~Iain Provan, Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies, Regent College

Readers will find this a rich resource for study and reflection on the God we encounter in the Old Testament and the vibrant and nourishing reality God calls into being through relationship.

~John R. Barker, The Bible Today

In a world whose dominant economic philosophy of empire instills a mentality of scarcity and competition, Brueggemann encourages us to follow the lead of the God of excessive fidelity, who initiates a reality characterized by abundance and neighborliness.

~Matthew Brake, Reading Religion