Walter Brueggemann (1933-2025)
Walter Brueggemann, born on March 11, 1933, died early in the morning on June 5, 2025.
A giant in the field of Old Testament scholarship, he outpaced all others in terms of his reach and scope. Brueggemann is often the only Old Testament scholar anyone knows by name, and this is no doubt due to his staggering literary output. A bibliography of his books runs to twenty pages and contains over 120 separate titles, over 40 of which appeared with Fortress Press. Most scholars, even prolific ones, aspire to three or four books in a career; Brueggemann published fourteen in his 90th and 91st years of age. It is not only the quantity that impresses; it is the quality. Several of these books changed and defined the field—though in Walter’s case, the field in question is actually plural, fields. He was one of a precious few who wrote easily and effectively for larger publics, especially Christian clergy and laypeople.
Brueggemann published his first book—or rather, his first three books—in 1968 and never looked back. Within a decade, he had published such classic works as The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Fortress, 1977; second edition, 2002; translated into Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese) and The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress, 1978; second edition, 2001; 40th anniversary edition, 2018; translated into Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Japanese). In the latter, Brueggemann contrasts the way the prophets, by means of criticizing and energizing, created and nourished a consciousness contrary to the triumphalism of imperial powers. The twinned theme of an imagination alternative to the dominant imperium runs throughout his work. Brueggemann went on to write major commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, in addition to other important monographs like David’s Truth: In Israel’s Imagination and Memory (Fortress, 1985; second edition, 2002); Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology (Fortress, 1988); and Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation (Fortress, 1989). Not a single trilogy, but a trilogy of trilogies of his collected essays began to appear in the early 1990s. In my judgment, the most important of these is The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Fortress, 1995), edited by his brother-in-law Patrick Miller, which opens with Brueggemann’s now famous typology of the psalms as organized into seasons of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation; and which includes the life- and church-changing essay, “The Costly Loss of Lament.” The late 1990s saw the appearance of what will remain one of Walter’s magna opera if not his true magnum opus: his 777-page tome, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Fortress, 1997; translated into Italian, Korean, Spanish, and Hungarian).
Brueggemann’s literary output accelerated as he aged: more than half of his books were published after his retirement in 2003. He was not only a writer, however, but also a ravenous reader, dipping into and benefiting from fields that most biblical scholars prior to him never dared engage. He was more than just an Old Testament specialist, as he worked dexterously across both Testaments. He did so armed with the insights gleaned from his relentless reading and with his exquisite attention to the biblical text—its detail, its tensions, its rhetoric. Wrapping it all up was Walter’s remarkable pen, his inimitable writing style. Simply, but also at root, Brueggemann was a cunning and incisive theologian of the first order, committed deeply to the Christian church but profoundly aware of its many failings. He was a dynamic lecturer and preacher in high demand and also a generous colleague and wonderful conversationalist: quick to joke and even quicker to laugh. To me, he was the best of mentors and exemplars; a living legend I was blessed to work closely with and call my friend. He will be remembered and mourned as the greatest Old Testament scholar of his time, but his works will continue to linger, summoning us to another and better way of being and living, faithfully. It takes a prophet to know a prophet.