The story of Israel is one of the outstanding tales of human history. Israel, occupying a narrow strip of land between sea and desert, was positioned on an international highway of commerce and warfare. This was a people whose future would be intertwined with the stories of nations great and small. F. F. Bruce shapes the daunting complexities of this history, nearly fourteen hundred years from the exodus to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, into straight prose that sparkles with clarity. More than half of the book is devoted to the postexilic history of Israel, the "intertestamental"...