The combination in the “succession narrative” of completely plausible candor about the human and confidence in the sovereign involvement of the Lord, poses the question of providence in the most profound way possible.

If Abraham is on the road again in the Christian movement, he will provoke preachers to think unaccustomed thoughts, and listeners will recapture something of the Abrahamic character of the Christian journey with God through real history.

Here is a commentary whose challenges and contributions are so large that it claims and deserves the attention of a more diverse readership than any commentary published in this century.

There is no mistaking the fact that the narrative traditions of the Old Testament expect to find a hearing among people prepared to recognize their own story in what is told and to see their own times as a direct extension of the same story.