Esther and Ruth (Reformed Expository Commentary)

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Publisher’s Description

Does God help those who help themselves? That may seem to be the message of the Books of Esther and Ruth. Some think that Ruth’s attractiveness won over Naomi and Boaz, or that Esther’s bold faithfulness saved her people. But a closer reading shows an embittered Namoi to have abandoned the Promised Land and God’s people, and Esther to have become thoroughly assimilated to the culture and values of Persian society.

In Esther, God works in invisible ways to save his people. In Ruth, God’s grace comes to Naomi unexpectedly, and with it, a depiction of redemption for her people. In both books, a gracious and sovereign God works through flawed individuals—unable even to help themselves—to rescue his people and prepare for the coming of Christ.

About the Author

A native of Great Britain, Iain Duguid served as a missionary in Liberia, West Africa, before studying for the ministry. He completed a PhD in Old Testament at Cambridge University, and subsequently planted a church on an inner-city housing estate in Oxford, England. He has taught Hebrew and Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi and at Westminster Seminary California, before teaching at Grove City College, in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He is also an ordained minister in the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church.

While working at the seminary in California, he also planted and pastored a church in Fallbrook. Shortly after he began at Grove City, he planted Christ Presbyterian Church. In his classes, Dr. Duguid is eager to help students learn not merely how to translate texts from Hebrew into English but also how to preach Christ from those ancient texts in ways that minister to the hearts of contemporary congregations.