This is Volume Two of Marching Orders, which like the original, is a book of devotionals intended for use by members of the Reserve Components of the United States Armed Forces attending Annual Training. As I said in the introduction to Volume One, Annual Training is a unique experience which can only really be understood by someone who has "been there and done that,” and, as a retired Army National Guard Chaplain I think that I qualify on that account. The purpose of this book is simple: to provide daily devotionals from the Christian Bible for troops attending Annual Training. Depending on the Reserve Component one is assigned to and the location where it is conducted, an Annual Training period can be 14, 15, or 17 days long. Reserve Component units that train overseas can be on duty for as much as 21 days. To split the difference, this book provides 17 days of devotionals. Our focus in Marching Orders Volume Two is our values as Christian members of the Armed Forces. Values are deeply held convictions that guide us when no other procedures, rules, regulations, or laws apply. They also greatly affect how we carry out our duties even when some sort of governing rule or document exists. I think an example from my civilian ministry will illustrate the role that values play in our lives: I serve in a rural town in south Alabama, and a new pastor came to our community recently from a large, metropolitan city. I asked him what the biggest difference he had seen as he made that transition. He told me, “Back in [the big city] if your church held an event, people expected it to be top-notch. If you put on an unimpressive or sloppy event, people just would not come back. They’d go down the road to the next church. Here [in the small town] people don’t seem to care as much about how good the event is. They are just grateful that you took the time and effort to do it.” Thus, we can see that in the big city, people hold to the value of Excellence, but in the small town, people cherish the values of Relationship and Caring. Every Soldier should be familiar with the Army Values (Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage) as well as the Warrior Ethos which asserts: • I will always place the mission first. • I will never accept defeat. • I will never quit. • I will never leave a fallen comrade. These are statements of belief that thrust Soldiers forward to victory in battle or success at home despite encountering all varieties of adversity. Likewise, our other military branches have statements of values as well, such as the Navy’s list of Honor, Courage, and Commitment, and the Air Force values of, “integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do.” The similar mottos of the Marine Corps (Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful) and the Coast Guard (Semper Paratus: Always Ready) are also value statements, and good ones. Truth be told, some Service Members often hold to less wholesome and less honorable values as well. I cannot count the times in my career I heard a leader say, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Contrast that cynical statement with something I heard more than one Coast Guardsman say about risking their lives during search and rescue operations during a storm: “The fact is, you have to go out, but you don’t have to come back!” I hope the devotionals included in this book will encourage the latter type of values, rather than the former! Some of the values we will examine will be from the military services, while others will come primarily from the Bible; however, every devotional included within will be based on God’s Word. Please note that I have chosen to use the King James translation of the Scriptures in this book for several reasons. First, the King James Bible has historically been the most commonly used translation among Protestants. In addition, the New Testaments provided to troops by the Gideons are usually in the King James Version and so this book will complement their efforts. Finally, according to the American Bible Society, the King James text is in the public domain, which resolves any copyright issues over its use in this book. Feel free, however, to read the focal passage of each day’s devotion in the translation of the Bible that best suits your needs. Some of the included devotionals will have a military theme, but not all of them do. However, as I said above, all of them do have a basis in Scripture and in the tenets of the Christian faith. I trust that they will encourage and sustain the reader during the trials and triumphs of Annual Training. Every blessing, Chaplain Otis Corbitt

This two-volume set is part of a growing body of literature concerned with the history of biblical interpretation. The ample introduction first situates key players in the story of the development of the major strands of biblical interpretation since the Enlightenment, identifying how different theoretical and methodological approaches are related to each other and describing the academic environment in which they emerged and developed. Volume 1 contains fourteen essays on twenty-two interpreters who were principally active before 1980, and volume 2 has nineteen essays on twenty-seven of those who were active primarily after this date. Each chapter provides a brief biography of one or more scholars, as well as a detailed description of their major contributions to the field. This is followed by an (often new) application of the scholar's theory. By focusing on the individual scholars and their work, the book recognizes that interpretive approaches arise out of certain circumstances, and that scholars are influenced by, and have influences upon, both other interpreters and the times in which they live. This set is ideal for any class on the history of biblical interpretation and for those who want a greater understanding of how the current field of biblical studies developed.

In Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers, Adriane Leveen offers a rereading of the fourth book of Moses. Leveen examines how the editors of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to control understanding of the past and influence attitudes in the future. The book explores politics, collective memory and the strategies used by its priestly editors to convince the children of Israel to accept priestly rule. Leveen considers the dynamics of the transmission of tradition, memory and values in an atmosphere of crisis as a generation witnessed its parents die in the wilderness yet chose to live in the promised land in fulfilment of God's vision.

The “extraordinarily informed” account of how US cryptographers broke Japan’s Purple cipher to change the course of World War II (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military’s breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, author Bruce Lee offers a series of fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war. Challenging conventional wisdom, Marching Orders demonstrates how an American invasion of Japan would have resulted in massive casualties for both forces. Lee presents a thrilling day-by-day chronicle of the difficult choices faced by the American military brain trust and how, aware of Japan’s adamant refusal to surrender, the United States made the fateful decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hailed as “one of the most important books ever published on World War II” by Robert T. Crowley, an intelligence officer who later became a senior executive at the CIA, Marching Orders unveils the untold stories behind some of the Second World War’s most critical events, bringing them to vivid life. With this book, “many of the mysteries that have eluded historians since the end of the war are much clarified: the Pearl Harbor fiasco, D-Day, why the Americans let the Russians capture Berlin, and why the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made. This is the most significant publication about World War II since the recent series of books on the Ultra revelations” (Library Journal). It’s a story that, as historian Robin W. Winks said, “no one with the slightest interest in World War II or in the origins of the Cold War can afford to ignore.”

Reproduction of the original: The War With Mexico, Volume II by Justin H. Smith

The first five books of the Bible contain many of its most famous stories, populated by vivid characters altogether human in their triumphs and failings--and an equally complicated deity. Many works of Western art and literature appeal to these stories, from Michelangelo's painting of Adam and Eve to a novel like William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses. The three great Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are rooted here. So is much of Western political theory and constitutional polity, for a good half of these books contains legislation (torah) of various kinds, as indicated by the ancient title: the book of the Torah. Law and narrative together render the character of the ancient covenant community known as Israel, as well as the God who rules over that community. In this revised and expanded version of his popular book of 1988, Mann engages literary criticism and theology in attending both to the composite nature of the Torah (or Pentateuch) and to its final, canonical shape. Mann's study provides a lucid introduction to the heart of the Hebrew Bible, suitable for students and general readers, but also of interest to biblical scholars.