'This is a book to be reckoned with, largely concerned with tracing the sources underlying the text and searching for the origins and meanings of the various traditions which have coalesced in those sources. It is a book which needs reading with attention, as valuable to the scholar as to the student. It rarely looks beyond the world of the Old Testament, so providing no short cuts for those who read commentaries to get simple answers; but for those who wish to study the book of Numbers seriously it is essential reading' (Joseph Robinson in View Review). 'Even where the reader may not be inclined to follow, he will be taught to read the text with close observation, and cannot but profit from the brilliant and stimulating mind of the author' (H. H. Rowley in The British Weekly).
Until his death in 1968, Martin Noth was Professor of Old Testament in the University of Bonn.