This is the third book I've read by Wenham (also The Easter Enigma and Christ and the Bible), and I have come to have a great admiration for the man and his writings. He is faithful in his Biblical reasoning, concise yet thorough in his presentations, and pleasant to read. The opening chapters of this book reaffirm both "the goodness and severity of God," His omnibenevolence and His sovereignty, and investigates the value of suffering and its general purposes. The other chapters investigate specific related questions – hell, the supposed "cruelty" of God in the OT, the imprecatory Psalms, and so on. My only disappointment was his (surprising) briefly-mentioned yet evident capitulation to annihilationism when speaking of the duration of suffering – and this after such insightful cautions to the contrary. This only arose once (that I noticed), and as I say, it was seriously disappointing. But the remainder of the book is well worth reading – if nothing else for his helpful summaries of the reality of evil in both life as we know it and in the Scriptures. He does not dodge the issue but faces it squarely.