The Rubin Edition of the Prophets: Kings I and II

Beautiful, wonderful edition to my personal library.I'm very pleased with my purchase.

Great addition to my collection of this series. Easy to read (large enough print for my old eyes). Looks nice and as always and Artscroll. Need it say more? Nope.

What you expect from Art-Scroll Messorah. Have the complete set so far. Contacted Art-Scroll and the Tehillim (Psalms) addition will be coming out with in 2016. Awesome for learning Hebrew and great Rabbinical commentary.

I have ordered several of these volumes and find them extremely helpful with diverse commentary. Week with the price

love the Hebrew and English comments. beetionn thru seminary, but learn so much from these books

Love it

ArtScroll books are designed to teach the views of utlra-orthodox Jews, and it does so in this volume. For example, II Kings 22 tells the story of a scroll of the Torah being found in the temple. Many scholars contend that the Torah did not exist before this time, before around 622 BCE.How did ArtScroll explain the event of the finding of a Torah scroll?ArtScroll, approaches the issue obliquely. It does not ask if the Torah existed before the time of King Josiah because its writers are convinced that the Torah existed since the time of Moses and does not want its readers to even think it is otherwise. Instead, it asks why was Josiah surprised, didn’t he know that Torah scrolls existed?ArtScroll offers several solutions which it drew from the Babylonian Talmud and the writings of traditional Jewish commentators. ArtScroll never gives the views of Reform, Conservative, or Modern-Orthodox Jews, or non-Jews. Its first answer is that the chapter describes the scroll in Hebrew as sefer haTorah with the letter hay, which means “the.” This, the book states “implies that this [scroll] was well-known., a unique Torah.” It was the scroll that Moses himself wrote. Other scrolls existed but the high priest, king, and others were impressed to see the Torah as actually written by Moses. This solution is questionable. Neither this chapter nor any other biblical source even suggests this. Secondly, if the hay was set in the verse to indicate uniqueness, it should have also been added to sefer. Third, when the story is repeated in II Chronicles 34:14, the hay is absent suggesting that it had not been inserted to imply uniqueness.ArtScroll gives as a second solution, if we reject the first, that the Torah existed since the days of Moses, but evil Judean kings – possibly Ahaz or Anon – destroyed all the scrolls of the Torah, except for one that the priests were able to save and hide in the temple. This is the scroll that was found. Again, this supposition is not mentioned in any biblical book and we would think that if such a remarkable somewhat miraculous incident occurred it would have been mentioned. The Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 103b states that evil kings mutilated the Torah, and ArtScroll cites this reference as its source, but the Talmud does not state there that the Torah scroll found during the days of King Josiah was the remaining unmutilated one. In any event, Maimonides warned people in his essay Chelek not to take midrashic non-legal statements as the truth because they were not composed to inform people of the truth, they are parables designed to teach moral lessons.ArtScroll also states that the prophetess Huldah’s prediction was true. She did not foresee that Josiah would “die” in peace, but he would be “buried” in peace.