Joyce Baldwin's TOTC is excellent for such a brief commentary. This series is usually pretty lightweight in terms of page length. This particular volume is worse than usual, since the whole of both I-II Samuel is a pretty hefty length of text. The Hosea commentary in this series is longer than this, and that's for a book less than 1/4 the length of Samuel. But Baldwin is very good, particularly in historical awareness and theological reflection, and she selects what's especially important to emphasize. I found that I got far more out of Baldwin than I did Anderson/Klein (WBC), Gordon (Library of Biblical Interpretation), and McCarter (AB) combined. She does deal with some critical issues in the introduction (e.g. responding to Wellhausen and Noth), but the commentary itself largely just explains the text. [Full Review]

This is a brief commentary, but other commentaries, e.g. the two by Klein and Anderson in the Word Biblical Commentary Series, are heavily into text and literary criticism and have very little to help busy preachers.

It is almost impossible to go wrong with any of the Tyndale commentaries. Baldwin contributed several commentaries to this series, including those on Esther, Daniel, and the post-exilic prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The commentary on the books of Samuel is a great example of Baldwin's high quality work. A very good introductory-intermediate level commentary. [Full Review]

Helpful exegetical commentary with some attention given to theological issues. Evangelical. [Full Review]

Helpful exegetical commentary with some attention given to theological issues. Evangelical. [Full Review]