Devotional Commentaries

One of the ways of studying the Bible that I find really helpful is using a devotional commentary. They're often books of sermons (or lightly modified sermons) working through a book of the Bible. Sometimes they are popular-level applied versions of heavy academic work. At their best, they combine high level scholarship with the heart of a preacher.

As a teenager, I found reading John Stott's devotional commentaries on Acts, Romans and Ephesians a real spur to spiritual growth. And as a minister, I don't often get to hear other people preach through a book of the Bible, so they are really useful for keeping me fed as a Christian.

The best list I've found of them is at the Good Book Company. They pick one (or occasionally two) for each book of the Bible. When I know the book, I guess I agree with the GBC list about 80% of the time. When there's a book I've not read any good devotional commentaries on, I'll now try the one they suggest first. But for what it's worth, here are a few where I'd pick something else:

Deuteronomy: CJW Wright (NIBC)
Ruth & Esther: I Duguid (REC)
Nehemiah: R Brown (BST)
Jonah: RT Kendall
Habakkuk: J Lamb (Keswick)
Zechariah: B Webb (BST)

Glo

Glo claims to be the next big thing in Bible study. It's a computer programme; it's quite expensive, but I got given a free copy with all the functionality and a fair bit of the content, so I thought I should probably review it.

The first thing to say is that it is a biiig programme. Like 18GB of hard drive, and needs a machine that can cope with Vista easily. I've got a fairly new computer with 3GB of RAM and an Intel T1600 Dual-Core processor, and Glo was pretty slow on it.

The interface does look very nice and kind of funky. It's clean and modern and looks good - the promotional video is just about right for that, except you probably need a very top-end computer to get that kind of performance. But I've seen websites with that kind of functionality which work much quicker, probably because they are using the greater power of servers. Which makes me wonder - wouldn't "the Bible for the digital age" be better working off some very fast servers somewhere? Kind of like BibleGateway, but maybe looking a bit funkier?

Glo seems to come with the KJV, NIV and CEV. But the search tools are fairly basic, and there doesn't seem to be any facility for using original languages or anything. And that's important because I was doing that stuff even before I went to theological college, thanks to e-sword, which is free, has Hebrew and Greek, and integrates Strong's numbers, unlike Glo, which is quite expensive.

Some of the resources that come with it are quite nice. Little video tours of places in Israel and so on. Study notes of a fairly comparable level to the NIV study Bible. A zoomable map interface that is very clearly based on Google Earth.

But Glo seems to be "all fur coat and no knickers" as the saying goes. The map interface doesn't seem to be searchable at all, and neither does the timeline (which I'd been hoping would be useful for teaching a Bible overview - nope). There's a basic search for the Bible text, but it's only a basic search. I tried searching for "Chronicles" in the search box, and it didn't even tell me there were two books of the Bible called "Chronicles". And the level of scholarship that has gone into this is pretty shoddy.

Don't get me wrong - I'm an evangelical who believes that Scripture (as originally given) is perfect, and I think that theological study is good and important when done rightly but all too often it's done badly. So let me give an example.

There's a video about Jesus' birth on Glo. And they visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They seem to have only been there on a pretty crowded day - it was rammed with people - whereas when I went there it wasn't too full at all. There's a bit of film in the grotto under the church where Jesus was quite possibly born. But then they point out (rightly) that it wouldn't have been like that then, so the rest of the film is in a free-standing stable. Which misses something quite big. All the early post-Biblical accounts point to Jesus being born in a cave. The grotto under the Church of the Nativity is a cave. Archaeology tells us that Bethlehem had a fair few caves, and a lot of them had a little shelter built onto the front and were used either as houses or as barns. So Jesus was probably born in a cave which had been partly converted into a barn or something like that. The idea of Jesus being born in a free-standing stable just doesn't seem to exist for centuries afterwards. And yet they blithely go along with it. The message of the video - that Jesus went all the way to the bottom to get us - was pretty good though. It's just a shame they messed it up with poor scholarship.

Or take the Bible timeline. OK, so they don't give a date for Adam and Eve (though their position on the timeline does make it look like 4000BC). But they very clearly put the Exodus at 1400BC, and try treating the Judges as sequential. Now the only way of getting the Exodus to 1400BC is if we take 1 Kings 6:1 absolutely literally. But 1 Kings 6:1 says a certain period of time was 480 years, and 40 and 12 are both clearly symbolic in Israelite thought. The archaeology suggests 1200BC as a much better date for the Exodus. The Judges shouldn't be sequential for the following reasons:
1) almost all of them only seem to operate in a small area, and the areas mostly don't overlap.
2) if you add up the total time the Judges ruled for and the times of oppression between judges, you get some very big number which doesn't fit into any Biblical chronology
But Glo just seems to ignore all of this. It's as if they've taken a lot of their intellectual content from someone who thinks that academic study of the Bible is a bad thing.

To summarise, I'd recommend Glo for someone who has a very fast computer and wants stuff to look pretty. Or if you want a series of video clips of Americans looking around sites that come up in the Bible. Or if you want an electronic Bible that has notes at the level of a basic study Bible, but costs three times as much. But not if you want Bible study software.

It's a shame really, because this could have been so much better. Like by giving BibleGateway a new interface, putting a load of videos up of Israel and so on, done by someone who knows what they are talking about, and releasing a patch for Google Earth that displays Biblical locations while being searchable.

Roy Clements - When God's Patience Runs Out

This is a book of sermons preached on Amos in 1984. Some of the application now therefore seems very dated, and there's one or two technical details about his handling of Amos I disagree with, but it's certainly well worth a read and good for getting across some of the force of what Amos was saying and for thinking about how to apply it to today.

Why are there so few of this type of book around. Why, for example, can't I find one on Hosea, or Joel, or Obadiah, or Micah?

Anyway, here's a thought-provoking quote:

For if God cannot in any sense be angry with people, what do we mean when we say he is being patient with them? If God is not subject to real and intense provocation by human sin, then all those Bible words such as long-suffering and mercy, even grace, become emptied of all meaning.

(Here's my link to commentaries I recommend. Any listed before the / are ones I find helpful to use devotionally, like this one...)

Christopher Ash - Out of the Storm

It's pretty rare I read a devotional commentary-type book that's this good. It's on the book of Job, and I heard a good sermon series spinning off from it last year. What I didn't realise was that the book was much, much better. Chris Ash used to be one of the ministers at a church I went to, and he was always very good pastorally and a pretty good preacher too. In this book, he does stunningly well at both. (And he's the director of the Cornhill Training Course, and these aren't three point sermons delivered in a didactic and unemotional style). And in the unlikely event that Mr Ash is reading this, any good is because God is choosing to work through him, and the honour and glory go to God, not to Chris Ash.

Here's a quote that I read this morning:

That is the conversation of Job 1-2. What is the only sure test by which the world will know who are real worshippers of the true God and who are just pretending? Answer: loss and suffering. The only sure test is to strip from worshippers something of value, and then we shall see if they really worship the living God and bow down to him simply because he is God. Only when worship comes at a cost may we tell if it is true. Suffering is the fire that refines and reveals the heart of worship.

And the list of commentaries I recommend, including devotional sermon-type commentaries is here.

Webb - Healing

Hezekiah recovered as the Lord said he would. It is rather surprising, however, after the astonishing nature of the sign, to be told that recovery itself was accomplished by something as mundane as the preparation and application of a poultice! But if we are surprised, it is because of a defect in our own theology rather than anything incongruous in the text. For there is no disjunction in Scripture between miraculous and natural healing, as though God were involved in one and not the other. He is as much Lord of the soothing poultice as he is of the moving shadow, and perhaps our eyes would be more open and our hearts more thankful if only we could grasp this simple and sane biblical truth more firmly.

Barry Webb, The Message of Isaiah (comments on Isaiah 38

More Books

Esther and Ruth - Reformed Expository Commentary, Iain Duguid

This is more like a book of sermons than a commentary per se. The series is meant to be written by "pastor-scholars", and each chapter is meant to be preached before publication.

Given that, it's pretty good. The sermons are Christocentric (though sometimes that's a bit forced), well thought through and good - the sort of thing that is accessible to intellectuals and non-intellectuals. The application probably isn't worked through as much as I would, but that's largely because books like this are aimed at everyone, not just at one specific group of people.

I wouldn't want this as a main reference work for preaching through a book, but I've found it useful working through the book of Esther devotionally, and I'd find it helpful for ideas for preaching through the book.

What Christ Thinks of the Church - John Stott

John Stott, preaching through the letters to the churches in Revelation 2-3. It's Stott on reasonably good form, not Stott on stunning form, but it's well worth a read.

Oh yes, and it's worth mentioning that my list of commentary recommendations is getting fuller...

Dale Ralph Davis - One Last Time

Yesterday, I finally finished working my way through Dale Ralph Davis's excellent series of books on Joshua - 2 Kings. They've been really great for helping me read and pay attention to the Bible in my own personal reading; a great source of ideas, and would be the first book I'd look at (after the Bible, of course) if I was meant to be preaching on any of that.

I don't agree with Dr Davis on everything, and I think there are some important things he missed but serious respect to him for this series. It's one of the most useful tools I know of for helping people read and preach the Old Testament.

Here are some of my posts inspired by him:

• Rant about Critical Theology
• Truth and Impressive Truth
• David and Jonathan
• Deprecatory Psalms
• Character Studies
• Grace and Holiness

Solomon - the Ambiguous King

Much though I respect Dale Ralph Davis as a Bible expositor, and much though I love and have benefited from almost all of his series of expositions on Joshua - 2 Kings, I have to disagree with him on the first half of Solomon's reign. He takes what I tend to think of as the "classic" view, of seeing the presentation of Solomon in 1 Kings 1-10 as entirely positive, with the wheels completely coming off in 1 Kings 11. But that's much too monochrome.

In pretty much every chapter, there are strong hints that there's something seriously rotten, and in every chapter of his book, Davis sweeps them under the rug. Provan, on the other hand, in his commentary (NIBC), tends to focus on the negative elements, sometimes at the expense of the many positives.

I guess I see 1 Kings 1-11 almost as the story of the end of the great Davidic monarchy over Israel, as the rotten bits, having started with David's adultery with Bathsheba, eventually corrupt it, even as it reaches its peak of splendour.

Because I missed lots of them until re-reading 1 Kings recently, and my attention was further drawn to them by Davis trying to argue that they weren't there, then reading Provan showed me they most definitely were, here are some of the bigger signs of rottenness in Israel in 1 Kings 1-10.

• 1 Kings 2 reminds me of the sequences in the Godfather films where everyone is killed off. Solomon uses inconsistent arguments, breaks promises and makes bad excuses to do it.
• The assessment of Solomon in 1 Kings 3:3 is mixed. He loves God, but he worships at the high places (which is one of the key phrases for apostasy later in the book)
• 1 Kings 4:15 - Solomon has a daughter called Basemath, which isn't an Israelite name (same name as Esau's foreign wife). Neither, for that matter, is Solomon.
• He builds the temple, but he spends much longer building his own palace, and the palace building is mentioned right in the middle of the temple building. The temple is lavish, but the palace is even more amazing
• In 1 Kings, the characters are very clearly conscious of the Law - Solomon himself quotes from it extensively in his prayer of dedication for the temple. Yet he breaks every single one of the rules about kings in Deuteronomy 17, most of them before 1 Kings 11, and we're told about his wives there:

16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
Deuteronomy 17:16-17, TNIV

The First Commandment and Checking Facts

I've recently started working through chunks of Deuteronomy (again), with the help of Gordon McConville's excellent commentary on the book, which seems to be very difficult to get hold of. I had it on order from the publisher for 6 months, gave up, the first two attempts at buying it via Amazon sellers didn't work (they didn't have it, but thought they did), but I eventually got a copy.

It's amazing how badly we can misunderstand common passages simply because preachers don't check their facts. For example, the First Commandment (Protestant numbering) of the 10 says

You shall have no other gods before me.

The standard sermon on that tends to go down the line of saying that God should be our number 1, or something. McConville helpfully points out that "before me" is literally "before my face" and is primarily spatial - it's saying that we shouldn't have any other gods at all in God's presence, rather than just being a weak statement about priorities.

Does that affect most of the sermons I have heard on the topic? No.

Calvin gets it right, in his excellent exposition of the 10 Commandments, though he wasn't working from the English translation...

Hermeneutics and 1 Corinthians 10:11

There's a verse in 1 Corinthians which tells us a bit about how to understand the Bible. It is interesting that what it says actually goes against at least two commonly held beliefs by some people who teach theology and stuff. Of course, there are about as many opinions as there are theologians...

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
1 Corinthians 10:11, ESV

False Statement 1 - Theology and History are Separate

"These things" refers back to what Paul has just been writing about - specifically details of the Exodus and the Israelites wandering in the desert that had happened over a thousand years before. There is a tendency in liberal theological circles, thankfully starting to die out now, to say that if something has theological value, it doesn't also have historical value. So people argue that because Jesus turning water into wine is a picture of him replacing the temple (which it is), that means it didn't happen, because the theological point is a good enough reason to record the story.

That is of course complete rubbish, because the theological truths also need to have a correspondence to reality. If Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, then the "theological point" that is made by the accounts of his resurrection is false. In order for the theology to be valid, the history needs to be valid as well. (Yes, there's a whole load of stupid arguments among some German scholars ages ago about what the meaning of history is. They are stupid. I'm using "history" in the sense of "events that really happened in the past".) That's a point that has been well made in a lot of the New Testament stuff by NT Wright, and others.

Paul's point here is that the events of the Exodus took place as examples. They took place. And they did so as examples - both the theological and historical are true, and indeed need to be true in order for them to be valid examples. Yes, there are cases (Jesus' parables for instance) where things do not have to be true in order for them to be valid examples. That isn't the case here.

False Statement 2 - The Importance of Original Meaning

One of the most commonly taught ideas in the whole area of how to understand the Bible is the idea of the importance of original context and original meaning. The main meaning of a passage is what it meant for its original recipients.

The problem is that what Paul says contradicts it. It doesn't contradict the idea that original context is often very important for understanding the passage, or that the original significance for the readers is important. But Paul says that the events recorded in Exodus happened and were recorded "for us". Why? Because the "end of the ages" has come - which in Paul's theology refers to the fact that Jesus has come - that all the ages were pointing to what happened in Jesus. Paul sees the main significance of the events of the Exodus as being for people living after Jesus, because he sees them as being fulfilled in Christ. That of course clashes with the conventional view (in many circles) of how to understand the Bible. The main significance of the passage is found in Jesus and for those who seek to follow him. It doesn't bother Paul that it was originally written 1000 years before the events that give it its main meaning.

Peter also agrees that the main significance of passages in the Old Testament wasn't understood until Jesus. Furthermore, he even argues that the writers knew that they didn't fully understand.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
1 Peter 2:10-12, ESV

I therefore conclude that the main significance of a Bible passage is the one that takes into account the original context and significance, but which points through them to Jesus. To my mind, if an Old Testament commentary doesn't do that, it is missing the main point.

David and Jonathan

I'm still working my way through Dale Ralph Davis's excellent series of books on Joshua - 2 Kings. I've rationed myself to one chapter per day so that I actually get space to think about stuff. Often he'll just put a paragraph in on an idea, and actually someone could take that idea and spin it off and write a book about it or something. This is, I think, one of those ideas.

The friendship between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel is a remarkable one. Jonathan is the heroic and godly heir to the throne - his father Saul is king. But Saul is a bad king - largely because (unlike Jonathan) he never really got the idea of trusting God. So God has said that Saul's family will lose the kingship, and it will pass instead to David. Not surprisingly, Saul doesn't like the idea and spends a lot of his time trying to get rid of David.

Jonathan, then, is in an interesting position. On one hand, he is eminently suitable for the kingship. He is the eldest son of the king; he has just the sort of character one would want in a king. But David is God's anointed (which is the key idea in Samuel). How will Jonathan respond? Will he seek to be king himself, or will he submit himself to God's anointed king at the cost of being king himself?

In a lot of ways, this is a similar situation to ours. We might well appear to be capable of running our own lives. We might even be good at it. We have, it seems, every right to be king. But God has said that we cannot be the rightful kings of our own lives. We need to submit to another - to God's anointed - to Jesus.

We see this clearly in 1 Samuel 20, which is where it all comes to a head.

Saul's anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, "You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse [i.e. David] to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die!"
1 Samuel 20:30-31, NIV

Saul is desperate to keep the kingship. He ends up losing it and his life. Jonathan is willing to give up his kingship to David, and after he dies, his disabled son ends up eating at the king's table.

Commentaries and Scholarship on Psalms

I'm doing quite a bit of work on the Psalms at the moment - partly because I'm down to preach on one of them in a few weeks, and partly because I'm meant to know some of them especially well for my exams next year, so am getting a bit of study in early.

The commentaries on Psalms really are quite an odd bunch. Academic study of the Psalms for ages has centred on the idea of form criticism - when coming to look at any given Psalm, many commentators see their top priority as putting it into one of a dozen or so artificially-constructed categories, which don't always fit that well. Their second priority is then to try to back-engineer the Psalm to work out how it was written, preferably on at least three separate occasions by different people, who were taking earlier material and modifying it. Yes, sometimes there is a good but not conclusive case that that may well have happened (e.g. Psalm 89). Alternatively, they might try to work out what liturgical purpose this Psalm might have fulfilled. If that means inventing new major festivals which there is no evidence for, that seems to be ok as well.

One mind-numbingly obvious problem with all of that is that the Psalms are written as songs to be sung rather than texts to be classified or analysed for redaction layers, but many commentaries don't seem to go much further than that unless they see hints of pagan creation mythology (Psalms 74 and 89), at which point they get all excited.

Given that, four commentators seems to stand out as being worth reading, and two of them weren't in a position to take any notice of modern scholarship, some of which is actually worthwhile. Those four are:

• John Calvin's Commentary on the Psalms (16th century)
• C.H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David (19th century) is well worth a look, especially for the "Quaint Sayings", where Spurgeon has put the best quotes he read on the Psalms.
• Willem vanGemeren in the Expositor's Bible Commentary Series is the best modern commentary I can find on all the Psalms
• Gerald Wilson in the NIV Application Commentary series (Psalms 1-72 only) is remarkable. Wilson spent most of his life studying the Psalms, and in some areas (e.g. Psalm ordering) was a long way ahead of anyone else in the world. It seems that when he was asked to do the NIVAC on Psalms, he threw everything at it. Volume 1 is longer than vanGemeren or Calvin's whole commentaries. Although the NIVAC usually doesn't bother much with scholarship, Wilson throws all kinds of interesting and useful bits in, then applies it, and manages to keep the emphasis devotional. And when I say he threw everything at it, I mean that. He died partway through writing volume 2. This is probably the best commentary on Psalms 1-72, and it is fairly easily accessible to laypeople.

It is quite possible that the multi-volume Baker commentary on the Psalms will be very good, but I haven't seen it yet.

Commentaries I Recommend

These are commentaries I personally recommend, which means I have used them quite a bit and really like them. I have plenty of other commentaries, some of which I expect I will like just as much when I use them a bit more, but I haven't yet used them in enough detail to be able to recommend them publically. There are even probably some I can't remember at the moment, but I'll put them up here when I do remember them.

In my earlier series of review on commentaries, I categorised them as paperback / hardback / heavy. Here, I think I prefer to distinguish by purpose. So the first commentary listed is something I've found helpful devotionally. The second is something I find helpful for getting to grips with the passage at a deeper level. Before I started at theological college, I'd have found one from the first column fine for work on preparing a sermon. Now I'd tend to use more...

It's worth adding that I find this site useful, but often over 10 years old so misses the best of the new. This page does a similar thing to what I am doing, but more years down the line.

Commentaries in square brackets are ones I haven't used enough to recommend properly, but which look excellent.

Genesis: / [Waltke]
Exodus: A Motyer (BST) /
Leviticus: /
Numbers: [G Wenham] /
Deuteronomy: C Wright (NIBC) / G McConville (Apollos)
Joshua: DR Davis (Focus) /
Judges: DR Davis (Focus) / Block (NAC)
Ruth: I Duguid (REC)/ [Block (NAC)]
1 Samuel: DR Davis (Focus) /
2 Samuel: DR Davis (Focus) /
1 Kings: DR Davis (Focus, but see this) / I Provan (NIBC) but light
2 Kings: DR Davis (Focus) / I Provan (NIBC) but light
1 Chronicles: Wilcock (BST) /
2 Chronicles: Wilcock (BST) /
Ezra: / [Williamson]
Nehemiah: Brown (BST) / [Williamson]
Esther: I Duguid (REC) / [Jobes (NIVAC)]
Job: C Ash ("Out of the Storm") / [Clines (Word)]
Psalms: see here
Proverbs: / [Longman (Baker)]
Ecclesiastes: I Provan (NIVAC) / Provan (NIVAC)
Song of Songs: [Gledhill (BST)] /
Isaiah: Webb (BST) / A Motyer (IVP), [Oswalt (NIC)]
Jeremiah: / Holladay (Heremneia)
Lamentations: / [Berlin (OTL)]
Ezekiel: C Wright (BST) / [Block (NIC)]
Daniel: /
Hosea: / McComiskey (Baker)
Joel: /
Amos: Roy Clements (When God's Patience Runs Out) /
Obadiah: /
Jonah: RT Kendal (paternoster classics) /
Micah: DR Davis / [Waltke (Eerdmans)]
Nahum: /
Habakkuk: J Lamb (Keswick) /
Zephaniah: JL Mackay (Focus) /
Haggai: /
Zechariah: B Webb (BST) /
Malachi: /
Matthew: / D Carson (EBC)
Mark: / RT France (NIGTC)
Luke: / [Bock (Baker)]
John: / D Carson (Pillar)
Acts: J Stott (BST) / [Bock (Baker)]
Romans: J Stott (BST) / T Schreiner (Baker)
1 Corinthians: / [Thiselton (NIGTC)]
2 Corinthians: R Clements, (the Strength of Weakness) /
Galatians: R Clements (no longer slaves) or Stott (BST) /
Ephesians: J Stott (BST) / [O'Brien]
Philippians: / [O'Brien]
Colossians: / [O'Brien]
1 Thessalonians: [Stott] /
2 Thessalonians: [Stott] /
1 Timothy: [Stott] /
2 Timothy: [Stott] /
Titus: [Stott] /
Philemon: / [O'Brien]
Hebrews: /
James: D Moo (Pillar) / D Moo (Pillar)
1 Peter: W Grudem (Tyndale) /
2 Peter: /
1 John: J Stott (Tyndale) /
2 John: J Stott (Tyndale) /
3 John: J Stott (Tyndale) /
Jude: /
Revelation: Richardson (Revelation Unwrapped) /

Bible Commentaries 3

• Part 1 - paperback commentaries
• Part 2 - hardback commentaries
• Individual Commentaries (work in progress!)

This is the third part in a series on series of Bible commentaries. This time, I'm aiming to look at longer and heavier commentaries. There's some overlap with part 2, but the series this time often seem to go into multiple volumes on a single Bible book or need knowledge of the original language. These are roughly in my order of preference.

Baker Exegetical Commentary

Baker seem to cover the Bible sporadically in mini-series (e.g. they have a series on Widsom Literature), but very well. The commentaries on the Minor Prophets, on Proverbs and on Luke are excellent, and I haven't seen any that aren't. Knowledge of the original language is useful but not essential for using them. If there's one in print, it's always worth at least a look and will probably be among the best commentaries on that book.

New International Greek Testament Commentary

Slightly oddly named series, only on the New Testament. Whereas most commentaries either use a common translation (NIV/NRSV/ESV) or the author translates it themselves, the NIGTC doesn't - it just leaves it in Greek and discusses the text in Greek. Hence some knowledge of Greek is very much required. The standard is pretty high - France on Mark is excellent, Thistleton on 1 Corinthians is meant to be excellent as well. Generally doctrinally conservative, though that can sometimes be a problem, depending on the author (e.g. in 1 Timothy 2, there is no real discussion of alternative interpretations to the traditional one).

New International Commentary

These seem to vary in weight and depth of coverage. Some, especially the older ones, are lighter - about the level of a NAC, and these are fairly mixed with some good and some less so. Generally the newer ones are both more detailed and better. Block on Ezekiel and Moo on Romans both seem to be among the best and most detailed things in print on those books. The people writing them are generally evangelicals, though coming from a range of positions within that. For example, 1 Corinthians by Fee is generally considered to be excellent and takes a significantly more charismatic view of the book than Thistleton in the NIGTC.

"Critical Commentaries"

I should confess to being immediately suspicious of any commentary that describes itself as "critical". "Critical" comes from a Greek word meaning "to judge", and we are meant to be judged by Scripture, not judge it. Some critical stuff is actually ok - trying to understand how one passage fits into the book as a whole. Some of it is rubbish - like spending almost all the space constructing elaborate pre-histories of the book which actually assume that it's not really true, and ignoring how it might apply to us.

Word Commentary

If you just looked at the advertising for them (and they're about the only series I've seen advertise), you'd think they were the last word in undetrstanding the Bible. They aren't. There are some excellent books in the series (Genesis, Job, John, Colossians spring to mind), but there are some which are horrible. The scholars are meant to be evangelical, but too often spend much of their time doing all the rubbish prehistory of text stuff and not enough on what the passage means and how it applies. In addition, comments on each passage are split into notes, form/structure/setting, comment, notes, explanation which makes them difficult to read, a problem not helped by using a less clear typeface and being badly printed.

Hermeneia

This series is big. They're aimed to be written "without arbitrary limits in size or scope", for which read "not easily portable". They're critical, but the primary aim is to "lay bare the ancient meaning of a Biblical work". And they actually often do a good job of it. Don't expect them to explain how an Old Testament passage is all about Jesus, but they're often very good on explaining what it meant for Israel. For example, it's the best commentary I've found on Jeremiah.

Anchor Bible

This is another critical series that aims to go into as much depth as possible. But they don't even expect their authors to be Christians, and often end up spending lots of time doing critical stuff. Three examples - Hosea in the Anchor series is one of the most (excessively) detailed commentaries on any book. Leviticus (3 volumes) is incredibly good and detailed on the significance of the OT ceremonial law, but I don't think it mentions Jesus (well, it is by a Jewish scholar...). The commentary on Jeremiah decides that the book of Jeremiah is in the wrong order, so re-orders it, then does the commentary, which kind of misses the point. Sometimes Anchor is better, sometimes Hermeneia is better. In general Anchor is more critical though. And if Hermeneia commentaries are difficult to carry, Anchor ones are difficult to afford. But it's usually not worth it.

International Critical Commentary

The name prejudices me against them. They're generally critical, liberal but often well-thought through. One of the problems with the series is that some of the books in it are 80 years old (but in modern bindings), which means that they don't just come out with critical rubbish, they come out with outdated, disproved critical rubbish. Another is the cost - they're fairly useful if doing study of the book in a non-Christian academic environment, as they tend to tell you lots of different opinions, but if I only had one commentary on a book, I can't think of a single example where I'd want it to be an ICC.

Series I've forgotten about

There are series I haven't mentioned here - the Interpretation Series, which seems to be a kind of liberal equivalent to the BST, the Sacra Pagina which might be a Roman Catholic equivalent of the NIC, and so on. That's because I haven't really comes across them much, though I know some evangelicals who like them.

Bible Commentaries 2

Part 1 | Part 3 | Individual Books

OK - this time I'm aiming to make a start on talking about hardback series of Bible commentaries.

NIV Application Commentaries

In some ways, these belong with the paperback commentaries, though some of them can get quite big. They're generally aimed at people who have to do preaching or teaching without knowledge of the original language. They tend to have sections for each passage on "Original Meaning", "Bridging Contexts" and "Contemporary Significance". That makes them not really ideal for devotional work, and sometimes a bit too much like predigested food for my liking when preaching. They often don't have much technical detail at all, but sometimes really engage with all the critical issues and stuff very well.

Having said that, if you're in a hurry, or don't have the background or training (or whatever) to figure out how to apply a passage in general terms, I'd imagine they are really useful. They've also done a very good job of selecting the authors - they are regularly the best easily accessible commentary on each book, especially in the Old Testament. The NIVAC commentaries on Psalms 1-72 and on Ecclesiastes are the best commentaries of any level that I've found on those books.

One tip for finding very good "heavy" commentaries - find out who wrote the NIVAC, and see what else they've written on that book...

Expositor's Bible Commentary

As series go, this is a real wildcard entry. Some of the commentaries (e.g. Carson on Matthew) are really good. Some are little more than a poor imitation of the Tyndale style. But they publish them in big books containing several commentaries of vastly unequal length and quality. For example, Carson's Matthew fills over half a book, with shorter commentaries on Mark and Luke tagged onto the end. But it's often possible to get them fairly cheap. I've certainly read comments on one of the commentaries saying something like "You should get this commentary, but only because it's in the same volume as vanGemeren's commentary on Psalms."

Pillar New Testament Commentaries

Take a good and well-respected evangelical scholar. Get them to write a good Tyndale-style NT commentary (verse by verse exposition, attention paid to original languages but explained clearly in English, good application of verses and passages, detail on structure of the book), but remove the limit on how much space they can take up within a single-volume commentary, go bigger and hardback and you have the Pillar Series. It's one of the best all-round series of commentaries - they even get commentaries in the series re-written if they aren't up to the high standards, and the series isn't nearly complete yet. Pretty much every commentary in the series is among the best on that book of the Bible.

There is an equivalent series in the OT - the Apollos OT commentaries. I think only three of the series have come out thus far, of which one didn't look great, and I've had one which is meant to be great (McConville on Deuteronomy) on order for several months because the print runs are never big enough for it. [Edited to add - I've got it; it was worth the wait]

New American Commentary

The space limits on the Tyndale series caused problems in the Old Testament (with a few exceptions). That kind of gap in the market seems to be filled quite well by the larger New American Commentaries. One of the big problems with the series is that they're published in the US, so are quite rare over here so difficult to look at beforehand. But they're cheap from Amazon due to a strong pound and weak dollar. The ones I've seen so far (Exodus and Judges especially) seem very good.

There is a New Testament series too, but the only one I've looked at didn't seem quite up to the standards of the Pillar series or the like. They are American, which is a mixed blessing. I've heard the series gets weird when it gets to eschatological stuff, and I don't know what they do with Genesis either.

Calvin's Commentaries

I really ought to mention these, for several reasons. One, they're available free on the Internet. Two, even though they're 450 years old, they're often still among the best commentaries. The bits I'm less keen on are where he tries harmonising books, which misses the point of having four gospels rather than one (for example), and means that he doesn't deal with the structural stuff as well.

On the other hand, if you want old commentaries, they're great. I've heard that Origen's commentary on the Song of Songs is really good too, and that's over 1700 years old....

Still to come...

I've still got to talk about the heavyweight commentaries (which I'm roughly defining as the ones which often go to multiple hardback volumes on a single book of the Bible or which require specialist knowledge of the language) such as NIC, Word, NIGTC, ...

Bible Commentaries 1

Part 2 | Part 3 | Individual Books

I think this is the sort of post I'd have found useful in the past. Over the last year or so, I've used a lot of Bible commentaries. One point worth making over and over again is that there is more variation between different commentaries in (almost) any one series than there is between similar-ish series. When choosing a commentary, there are several factors to bear in mind.

Why do you want to use one? Is it for personal devotions, for trying to understand a difficult bit of the Bible, for preparing a sermon or a Bible study, for academic work?

What level of background do you have? Do you want something that will assume lots of theological terms and a reasonable proficiency in the original language or something that will ignore it altogether?

I'm aiming today to think about commentary series which are available in paperback, then might move on to some of the heavier ones later. It's worth mentioning that Parableman has his own recommendations, which are pretty good.

Bible Speaks Today

This is probably the series I've seen for sale most often over the years. They generally read like moderately academic sermons - the kind of level I'd expect to hear at the CU at a fairly academic university.

However, the standard of them is somewhat variable. At best (like Stott on Acts, Romans and Ephesians or Wright on Ezekiel), they are pertinent, challenging, clear and really help to understand the text better. But quite a few of them are just long-winded and obtuse ways of saying obvious stuff in a way that isn't especially challenging.

If you get a good one, they can be great to use devotionally, or maybe for a Bible study leader.

Crossway Bible Guides

Simpler than BSTs, very clear, but not much depth. They tend to state the obvious quite a bit and just put some application questions. I've only used a few of them, but they seemed ok. If you want to get to know the Bible better and find it hard to understand or if you're a group leader who doesn't read a lot, they might well be helpful.

Tom Wright's "For Everyone" Series

I've tried them a few times, but really can't get into them. He seems to make comments which are interesting in themselves but don't really go too well with the text and don't really apply it. Probably similar to Crossway in academic level. Quite a few people I know find the translation (which is freshly done by Tom Wright) useful though.

Tyndale Series

These aim to be more of a verse-by-verse commentary than any of the others so far. In my experience with them, there seems to be a big difference between the Old Testament ones (with a few exceptions) and the New Testament ones. The OT ones are usually much too short for the book of the Bible they are dealing with, so don't have space to do more than state the obvious, with a few exceptions (e.g. Wenham on Numbers). The one on Jeremiah (longest book in the Bible) doesn't even look long enough to fit the full text of Jeremiah in! The NT ones are about the same size as the OT ones, but with much shorter Bible books and the format really comes into its own there.

There is commentary on the original language (well, in the NT ones anyway), but you don't need to be able to read or understand Greek at all to use the commentary - it's usually made clear what's going on. Depending on the author, they can be really well applied as well. I've found Grudem on 1 Peter and Stott on 1 John to be really helpful.

At their best, the Tyndales and BSTs end up pretty similar and are probably the best paperback commentaries available. At worst, there's little point buying them, however little they cost.

Books of Sermons

Some of these can be really good as well, and are often the best thing available in paperback on that book. Examples inclue Dale Ralph Davis on Joshua-2 Kings (1 volume per Bible book), Kendall on Jonah.

New International Bible Commentary

This is another very variable series, not just in the quality but in what the authors try to do. Some (e.g. Wright on Deuteronomy) are not that different from books of sermons and can be really good (Wright is). Others (e.g. Provan on 1&2 Kings) do pretty much verse-by-verse with little application, though Provan does it well. Others try anywhere on that spectrum, with varying degrees of quality.

Reading the Bible Today

They try to do a kind of "written exposition" that is part way between the BST and Tyndale styles. It ends up giving only one interpretation of the passage, which isn't always the obvious one, but which gives some food for thought and useful ideas for preaching. But I wouldn't want to prepare a Bible study with this as my only commentary.

Sheffield Academic Guides

These are actually quite useful for getting an overview of a book and seeing what people say about it. It's often the most useful paperback for revising the book for an academic exam, but don't expect them to view the Bible as true.

Reformed Expository Commentaries

See here for my thoughts on the only one I've used.

Choosing a Commentary

Ideally, always read at least part of it before you buy it. Find a difficult verse in the book or a verse you know quite a bit about and see what several commentaries say. If you can't do that, my recommendation for paperback commentaries for fairly literate people (but don't have to be a supergenius) would be roughly as follows:

• New Testament
  • If Stott wrote the BST, get that
  • Otherwise get the Tyndale
• Old Testament
  • Is there a good book of sermons on that book? (I've mentioned some above) If so, get that
  • Wright on Deuteronomy (NIBC), Wenham on Numbers (Tyndale), Kendall on Jonah, Motyer on Isaiah (not Tyndale)
  • otherwise BST is probably your best bet. Some are great, but don't expect them all to be. There is a problem with lack of good commentaries on chunks of the Old Testament. NIVACs are often better and at the same sort of level, but are hardback and generally more expensive.

Ezekiel - Chris Wright

This is one of the best titles in the Bible Speaks Today series of commentaries. It's certainly the best I've read on the Old Testament.

Commentaries in the BST series generally read like moderately academic sermons, but the standard of them is somewhat variable. At best (like Stott on Acts, Romans and Ephesians or indeed Wright on Ezekiel), they are pertinent, challenging, clear and really help to understand the text better. But quite a few of them are just long-winded and obtuse ways of saying obvious stuff in a way that isn't especially challenging.

Wright doesn't cover all of Ezekiel in the same depth, probably due to the contraints of space. He provides some excellent chapters on some sections of Ezekiel, especially towards the beginning of the book, whereas other chapters and sections get much lighter treatment.

I found the book very helpful devotionally, and would be fine using it for a basic reference work on Ezekiel as a whole and on the chapters he covers in more depth. But if I need to do a longer series on Ezekiel, I guess I'd end up getting Block's massive 2 volume commentary in the NICOT series, which Wright has clearly used extensively (though doesn't always agree with), or maybe Zimmerli's Hermeneia commentary, which Wright also references frequetly.

Eine Kleine Lightreading

I've done some light reading over the last few weeks. Here are some of the books...

Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card is the third in the Shadow Saga by my favourite Mormon writer. It's not vintage Card sci-fi, like Speaker for the Dead is - it's more geopolitics a la Tom Clancy, but without the details of weapons and stuff. Still, a decent light read.

Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall-Smith is another book in the Botswana series. They are great fun, likable and understandable characters, really well written. Light reading, but good fun.

The Letters of John by John Stott is a good and fairly light commentary on 1 John, 2 John and 3 John. ("Good" and "fairly light" by no means always go together when I use them.) He does use the Greek, but not in a heavy way and sticks to explaining the passage. Occasionally he overstates a case, but in general I found this a really helpful book to use devotionally.

Commentaries

My number one piece of advice to people studying academic theology at doctrinally mixed or liberal universities is to read good evangelical commentaries on the relevant passages. I find here a good place for recommending evangelical commentaries on books, though I disagree with some of their selections.

A while ago, I was asked about the NIV Application Commentaries series. I've recently had occasion to skim quite a lot of commentaries, and I can make the following points:

• They're probably more consistently solid as a series than Tyndale (or even BST). Some of that is down to the format. On the other hand, I don't think there's anything spectacularly amazing in the series - I think that's also down to the format.
• They're not heavyweight in terms of textual stuff, translation issues, etc but they do mention them. A few of them are shortened versions of other stuff in print (e.g. Smith's very good commentary on Amos).
• They're ok at applications (better than Tyndale / BST) - they probably make it a lot easier to preach a decent sermon on a passage, but not much easier to do an excellent one

Dale Ralph Davis - 2 Kings

Another book I just finished reading, but not for my course, is Dale Ralph Davis's commentary on 2 Kings.

As commentaries on OT narrative go, it's pretty good - it's probably the way he'd preach it at a guess. It's very accessible, there are lots of American analogies and illustrations, he finds his way into the passage, explains what it means, and comes out with some decent points of application.

Some bits I think were done very well, some were less good, but still ok. Having now read Provan, Longman and Long's treatment of OT History, I think there might well be a lot more that could be got out of the passages, but this is an excellent place to start thinking through 2 Kings.