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People often assume—wrongly—that the Bible presents a single view of God and the world. In Understanding Wisdom Literature, David Penchansky shows how the Hebrew Bible’s wisdom books, Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, speak differently from covenant-centered writings such as Genesis, Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Two additional wisdom books, Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon (found in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons), have connections to both the older wisdom books and the Jewish covenant traditions.

A Liturgy of Grief: A Pastoral Com­mentary on Lamen­tations, by Leslie C. Allen (Baker, 208 pp., $21.99 paperback). Sensitive to detail and nuance both in the poetry lamenting Jeru­salem’s destruction in 587 BCE and in 21st-century hospital corridors, this gracefully written commentary correlates, for instance, tears on Jerusalem’s cheek with a picture of a dew drop on a fallen green leaf signaling stillbirths in a maternity ward. Lamentations is a heart-wrenching book. Allen opens it up, giving us words for the full range of tragic experience.