John Barclay's Paul and the Gift features a powerful and illuminating comparison and contrast between Paul's theology of grace and theologies of gift and reward in other Second Temple Jewish texts. Barclay is right to critique E.P. Sanders's conflation of the priority of grace with other perfections of the gift concept, but his own assertion that Paul, like the author of 4 Ezra, regards the divine gift as necessarily circular is questionable. Both Paul and the author of 4 Ezra, rather, seem to leave open the possibility that God may freely bestow his grace on the unworthy, not only in this world, but also in the next.