One of the key challenges when preaching Old Testament narrative is to move away from mere moralising to showing how the whole of scripture speaks of Christ and is relevant to our Christian lives. The book of 1 Samuel is full of fantastic well-known stories about Samuel, Saul and David but it also contains many stories that are more difficult to understand or preach on. Andrew Reid’s book, Teaching 1 Samuel, is full of ideas and suggestions to help us think through how we teach 1 Samuel to Christians today. The book is not a traditional commentary – you will want to use it alongside a more detailed commentary. The book’s strength lies in getting you thinking about how to contextualise the text into our context. Reid provides practical help for the preacher or anyone teaching on 1 Samuel (perhaps in a Bible study context) and is pastoral throughout in his application.

Stephen Allison, Kiltarlity Free Church