Rate My Professor J. Blake Couey

J. Blake Couey is Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he has served since 2009. He specializes in the Hebrew Bible, with primary research interests in Biblical Hebrew poetry, prophetic literature, the book of Isaiah, ancient Israelite prophecy, ancient Near Eastern religions and cultures, and the Bible and literature. Couey earned his B.A. from Mercer University in 1999, M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2002, and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2009. He teaches courses such as The Bible, Prophets, Women Gender & Bible, Biblical Hebrew I and II, and Origins of God. He is affiliated with the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and Comparative Literature programs and serves as Program Director for Comparative Literature. Previously, he directed the Three Crowns Curriculum.

Couey is the author of Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2015). He co-edited Biblical Poetry and the Art of Close Reading (Cambridge University Press, 2018) with Elaine T. James. His publications include "The Disabled Body Politic in Isaiah 3:1, 8" in the Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 95-109; "Evoking and Evading: The Poetic Presentation of the Moabite Catastrophe in Isaiah 15–16" in Concerning the Nations (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015); "Haggai" in Fortress Commentary on the Bible (Fortress, 2014); and "Amos 7:10–17 and Royal Attitudes toward Prophecy in the Ancient Near East" in Vetus Testamentum 58 (2008). He is currently working on a commentary on Isaiah 1-39. Couey contributes to public scholarship through platforms like Working Preacher and Bible Odyssey and participates in events such as faculty shop talks and the Nobel Conference at Gustavus.