Victor L. Ludlow

Ludlow's scholarship is great, and his doctrinal insights instructive. He puts the scriptures into the text of the discussion, which is useful.
He spends a lot of time showing how Isaiah's literary style influenced his reception by the ancient Israelites, and conformed to their customs of poetry. However, much of that is not easily transferred into English, although the parallelism and chiasmus structures are, and knowing them did help in interpreting Isaiah's meaning.
He also includes the relevant cross-references from LDS scriptures, which makes comparisons and analysis much easier.
That being said, there were a lot of stylistic choices in the book that caused me some difficulty in using it.
(1) He used several translations of the scriptures to make some of his points more accessible, which is fine; however, then in the body of the discussion, he would use the language of a different translation, which was confusing.
(2) He often referenced maps that were not included in the book, there was no index to the maps that were included, and when I did find one that he named, it didn't have the information he was talking about. (The publisher's editors should have caught this major problem before printing.)
(3) He restates the clearest scriptures (if anything in Isaiah can be called clear), which really didn't need it; yet omits discussion of the more complex, ambiguous, or contradictory verses.
(4) His LDS commentary can be ignored by non-Mormons; however, Church members should be aware that he does a lot of speculation of the type, "It should be this way, thus it must have been so," I was particularly challenged by his interpretations of the rod of the stem of Jesse in 11:1 (p, 167-168).… (lisätietoja)