The quote that is worth the purchase price for me & has triggered much contemplation:
"We must take care not to attach the authority of the text to things it never intended to teach. For example, it is very possible to learn much about leadership from a study of Nehemiah. In the end, however, there is no indication that the author of Nehemiah was preserving and presenting his material so that readers could be instructed in leadership. That being the case, when leadership is taught from the book and life of Nehemiah, the authority of Scripture is not being tapped. Leadership is an important quality and one that is worth learning about, but one may just as well learn about it from the lives of Abraham Lincoln or John Calvin. There is no special merit in learning it from Nehemiah simply because his story is in the Bible while the others are not. The presence of Nehemiah's story in the Bible does not necessarily endorse his style of leadership or approve his leadership decisions. What makes the Bible unique is the things that it teaches with the authority of God. In the case of Nehemiah, the teaching of the book would concern such things as God fulfilling his promises of restoring the city of Jerusalem and his sovereignty in the way his plan was carried out through the yieldedness of Nehemiah. Although many of the principles interpreters derive may be sound, the book of Nehemiah is not God's authoritative guide for leadership."

I have realized that this is the problem with many Christian literary products today. When you create multiple full-length books based upon 1 verse like 1 Chronicles 4:11-12, you should not expect that any of those books' content is authoritative. Another set of authors has used just one verse (1 Corinthians 11:3) to completely rewrite orthodox trinitarian theology and created mounds of books to support this, just for the purpose of maintaining their own power.

I very highly recommend this book. I believe that it was developed as a textbook for Christian colleges, but it is very easily accessible to high school students and would also make a great book for a Bible study or Sunday School class. Nearly every two-page spread has at least one photo or chart or graphical depiction that directly aids in understanding the concept being taught there. I wish that this textbook had been available when I was in college, though I will say that A Survey of the Old Testament by the same authors was the textbook that I did have and it is not nearly as developed as this book. ( )

Should lose half a star for a few ambiguous, unnecessary paragraphs speculating how Old testament saints were saved, probably because it could use a more solid foundation on a covenant theology. Other than that, a superb overview of the Hebrew Bible in its context, historical, cultural and theological, taking into account also the New testament interpretation of the old. ( )