Keil opens where this unit opens, and he does not hedge: “The five books of Moses.” He works through what the Pentateuch calls itself — Sepher hattorah, the Law-book; or simply Hattorah, the Law — and shows that the name describes both its contents and its standing in the Old Covenant. This is the best single entry into the whole course: the five books as one book, with one Author and one Lawgiver. Keil is the conservative half of “Keil & Delitzsch” and the Pentateuch volumes are his; read him for the ground the other four units stand on.

Pink sets the tree in Eden beside the tree at Calvary and will not let you look at one without the other. Genesis 3:6 said the first tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise — and Pink takes each of the three and shows the Cross answering it: good for food, for it is the meat and marrow of the believer’s life; pleasant to the eyes of faith, for there we see our sins blotted out; and desired to make one wise, for the preaching of the Cross is the wisdom of God. Note the shape — one text, three parallel divisions, a single keyword. Note: Pink writes from a Reformed position; this chapter carries none of it.

Keil takes the Flood and Babel as history, and the care he spends on the detail is the argument. He works the chronology, the geography, and the table of nations as a man handling a record rather than a legend — which is precisely what this unit needs, because Genesis 6–11 is where the modern reader is most often told to stop believing. Keil grants nothing and explains everything. Read it alongside Unit 3 and notice how much of the “problem” dissolves when the text is read carefully instead of defensively. This is Keil’s second appearance on this shelf — a different book of the Pentateuch, a different question.

The call came to Abram in Mesopotamia and it demanded two things: confidence in the word of Jehovah, and separation from everything natural. Pink is honest about what happened next — Abram rendered a tardy and partial obedience. He took his father and his nephew; he stopped at Haran and stayed there till Terah died. And there is no record of God speaking again until the call had been fully obeyed. Then Pink turns it: when Hebrews 11 recalls this, Abram’s failure is not mentioned — “By faith Abram… obeyed.” That sin, with all his others, had been blotted out. First the obedience of faith, then communion and worship. There was no altar for Abram in Ur or Haran.

Chadwick begins by conceding the ground and then taking it back in one sentence. Much about Exodus is now denied or doubted inside the church, he grants — but one thing can neither be doubted nor denied: Jesus Christ did certainly treat this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority. He taught His disciples to regard it so, and they did. That is the whole case for a high view of Exodus, and Chadwick rests it on Christ rather than on argument. He is equally firm the other way: he refuses to let imagination do the work of reason in sacred things, because no honour is done to the Spirit of knowledge and wisdom by fancy and quaint conceits. A guard worth having before Units 7 and 11.

Soltau gave up a Chancery practice to study this, and it shows — he measures the tabernacle the way a barrister reads a deed, and every measurement preaches. Take his treatment of the vail and the way into the holiest: access is in the blood, so the way is not merely opened but the worshipper himself is fitted to walk it; and though there can be only one Great High Priest, believers who constitute the royal priesthood share His nearness of approach. He notices that the vail’s four pillars had no capitals — they lacked the ordinary completeness of a pillar — and asks what that may be telling us. Note: Soltau writes from the Brethren tradition; expect dispensational framing, and read the types as illustration rather than proof.

Kellogg is the reason this shelf can be trusted on the Law. He states plainly what the Jews of our Lord’s day believed about the Mosaic origin of this book, that no second opinion is traceable before the Christian era — and that Jesus Christ shared and repeatedly endorsed that belief, calling it the law of Moses and declaring that not one jot or tittle should pass till all be fulfilled. Then he opens the offerings, and the whole Levitical ritual turns out to be the most striking illustration in Scripture of a Lamb foreknown before the foundation of the world. Note where he begins: at the tent of meeting, where the first words from Sinai had been law and the first words here are grace.

Watson opens Numbers by comparing it to Greek drama, and the comparison earns itself: a main idea, groups of persons carrying it out or opposing it, and a keen ethical strain that makes the movement tragic throughout. Moses stands at the centre with his helpers and his opponents — Aaron and Miriam, Joshua and Hobab, Korah, Dathan and Abiram, Balak and Balaam. He is brought to extremity; he despairs and appeals to Heaven; and in one hour of pride he falls into the sin that brings doom on him. Watson calls it eternal literature more fitly than the Iliad has been called an eternal poem. For a unit about wandering, this is the reading that shows you the wandering had a plot. Take the opening; his later section on priests and Levites raises critical questions it does not settle.

Every reader of the Pentateuch eventually asks how far a type may be pressed, and Fairbairn is the man who answered it. He viewed typology in connection with the whole series of the divine dispensations — which is his way of saying that a type is not a riddle planted for clever readers, but a real thing in a real history that God shaped toward Christ. That rule cuts both ways, and Fairbairn uses it both ways: it licenses the tabernacle and the offerings, and it forbids the fanciful. Read him before Soltau and Unit 11, not after; he supplies the discipline that keeps typology from becoming an imagination game. Note: Fairbairn writes from the Reformed tradition; this is a book about types, not about election.

The shelf already follows Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, but it needs Deuteronomy to complete the five books of Moses. Keil introduces Deuteronomy as Moses’ final covenant address to Israel on the plains of Moab: not a second or rival law, but the law preached, explained, and pressed upon a new generation about to enter the land. This selection helps the reader see the book’s unity, its pastoral urgency, and its repeated summons to remember, love, obey, and teach the words of the LORD. Keil writes from a conservative Lutheran tradition and strongly defends the book’s Mosaic setting and essential unity.