Friends have often asked me how I use commentaries, mainly because of my qualifications as a biblical scholar. At times, I perceive that some assume I spend hours pouring over multiple commentaries on the passage that I plan to preach that week. The fact is, I simply do not have time to do that type of reading throughout my week, nor do I believe it is helpful to do so.
Therefore, I will share three ways I use commentaries as I prepare to teach and preach, from start to finish.
1) I do not use commentaries… initially.
This may seem like a strange way to start a “how to” article on the use of commentaries in the life of the local pastor or lay person. However, it is a good place to start, I believe.
Most of you realize that there are a lot of commentaries out there! Almost like the amount of study bibles these days, the number of commentaries on any given biblical book can be bewildering! For many reasons, I think this can cause unintended problems. The most important problem to highlight is that if we go to commentaries before doing our own thinking, we are essentially asking the commentaries to do our thinking for us!
The fact is, as a busy village pastor, I generally don’t use commentaries all that often when I prepare for teaching and preaching. I am fortunate to have the theological training that makes my study of Scripture and preparation very efficient. But, I think there are three principles of biblical interpretation and a couple questions that can help almost anyone get to the essential meaning of the text before turning to someone else’s thoughts in a commentary.
First, Scripture interprets Scripture. This means that if a passage is puzzling, look at other passages of Scripture that may shed light on the problem passage. Often times cross referencing a passage or a verse can help.
Second, I interpret Scripture literally. Of course, we need to decide what “literal” means according to the genre of Scripture from which the verse or passage emerges. For example, we wouldn’t interpret the imagery of the bride’s white teeth as a flock of sheep in Song of Solomon 4:2 in the same way as we would with the imitation Jacob makes of Esau’s furriness in Genesis 27:11-12 — her teeth aren’t furry, they’re radiantly and beautifully white, but they are also, according to genre, not intended to be like the whiteness of the “whitewashed” hypocrites in Matthew 23:27. Knowing the genre is important to knowing how to interpret the meaning of the passage and grasp the author’s intention for the words he uses.
Additionally, context is king! When interpreting the meaning of the text, we need to take a moment to observe how a verse or a passage is situated between what is said before and after it. Abstracting a text from its literary context can cause problems with interpretation and application. Genre and literary context hold important clues to how a passage was intended to be read.
Third, I interpret Scripture according to its historical context. Before reaching for a commentary, for example, I might read a little on the family structure of a first-century Jewish or Greco-Roman family as I try to interpret and apply Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 5:22-33.
In addition to these three steps, I will ask a couple questions before reaching for a commentary. First, What does the passage say? To answer this question, I will simply repeat the words in the passage and exercise simple observation. I see this step skipped even by the most seasoned scholars with unfortunate results. Simple observation helps me say what the passage is saying and not what I want it to say. Oftentimes, I can tend to begin interpreting a passage before I know what it says, which can lead to introducing concepts that are foreign to the passage, and can cause misinterpretation and misapplication.
Second, I will ask “so what?” Essentially, I want to know why God would want me to know about whatever the passage says. Like a salesman who is solving a relatable need with a product (pardon the crassness of the analogy), Scripture is addressing relatable issues of ‘fallenness with God’s redemptive solution. Some of the most inaccurate and irrelevant teaching and preaching I have heard in the past (and that I have given myself) is a result of not adequately answering the “what does it say” and “so what?” questions.
2) I use short commentaries as conversation partners
After I have covered the steps and questions from above, I will move on to a commentary. The previous step allows me to be prepared, not simply let the commentary do the thinking, but to converse with the commentator. Do not skip this important step of active and critical thinking! Commentaries are written by fallible and biased humans, just like me, so being ready to agree or, dare I say it, disagree with a commentary is vitally important. But, just like I cannot afford to have numerous three-hour conversations or meetings with people throughout my week, neither can I afford to do the same with a commentary. Therefore, I normally turn to commentaries that are brief, and that have proven to be tried and true. I call these commentaries my “North Stars,” which means that I trust them to be accurate and well-reasoned.
I have found some commentary series to be reliable places to start for such comment, such as, The Tyndale OT/NT Commentary Series (IVP), The Bible Speaks Today (IVP), the summary sections in select Word Biblical Commentary Series (Zondervan) or Sacra Pagina volumes (The Liturgical Press), and some of the old classics like Calvin’s commentary on Scripture (Baker), and Matthew Henry’s commentary (Hendrickson). Additionally, one-off short commentaries such as Robert Yarbrough’s John Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 1991), Beverly Gaventa’s Acts commentary (Abington, 2003), or William Lane’s shorter Hebrews commentary (Regent College, 1985), to name just a few, can be helpful if you can find ones that you trust.
In sum, those commentaries that become my “North Stars” provide me several sane and straightforward pages of comment on the message of a given passage, not normally going much longer than one or two paragraphs on a verse or two, and steer clear of any dense discussion of grammar, historical context, or linguistics, but instead only raising such issues if they matter to the immediate and overarching thrust of the passage. In all honesty, sometimes I only need a little conversation to get me going in the right direction, or to get my mind working. In those cases, I will simply read some comment in my study Bible. I endorse the comment in the ESV Study Bible to my congregation and friends.
Once I have read one of these commentaries on the passage and its context, and interacted with the commentator, I am normally ready to move on with my preparation.
3) I use large commentaries sparingly and strategically
Many of us have probably seen the trend in commentary writing has gone the way of multi-volume or very lengthy single volumes commentaries. Size does not always equal quality, and in my experience, their length normally has an inverse relationship to helpfulness to my preparation. Do not hear me wrong, many of these lengthier commentaries are very well done, such as Keener’s 4 volumes on Acts or Bock’s three volumes on Luke-Acts (Baker, 1994, 1996, 2007), and many others, but for my purposes, I do not normally need every stone turned. Instead, I use these larger exegetical commentaries strategically.
If steps one and two lead me to very specific questions that I am struggling to answer, I will grab a detailed exegetical commentary and probe the question. Unlike step two where I intentionally gravitate only to one commentary for a general discussion of the text, I will normally engage two or three larger exegetical commentaries to answer questions related to detailed issues. Commentaries are not the greatest source for up-to-date research on a passage or a particular debate, but one can get a general lay of the land on a thorny or debated issue by surveying several commentaries. I will use Bible dictionaries or other reference works as part of my survey too. It is hard to recommend just a few in this step since there are so many larger commentaries to chose from. However, more frequently I go to those that served me well in my seminary days, such as, the JPS commentary series and Gordon Wenham’s commentaries for the Pentateuch, select Berit Olam volumes, some of Eerdman’s New International Commentaries on the OT/NT, Baker’s Exegetical Commentary on the NT, some of the Anchor volumes are helpful, among other great series that are too many to note. There are also some “North Star” worthy one-off volumes that are too numerous to list here as well. For good Bible dictionary material, Anchor Bible Dictionary and IVP’s series of dictionaries are two good places to begin and to which I will normally gravitate before I get into more current peer-reviewed journal articles.
The large, multi-volume commentaries are by far the least utilized books on my shelf, but when I need them they are of immense value. They remain in my use of commentaries, however, my last line of defense.
Summing up
To conclude, “commentaries were made for you, you were not made for commentaries.” What I am saying is that commentaries are meant to be used in the best way that benefits you and the application of a text to your growth in holiness, and to the lives of the people you are teaching or to whom you are ministering. If you are reading commentaries cover-to-cover or attempting to read every commentary on a certain biblical book, you are probably doing it wrong! Rather, take time to do your own thinking, then select a conversation partner that will not dominate the conversation or your time, and if the conversation leaves you scratching your head, go for one of the tombs!
In the end, trust in the perspicuity of Scripture, work on your ability to discern the message of Scripture for your context, and let the commentary give you companionship and maybe, at times, little direction when you encounter uncharted terrain.
This resource is part of the series Seeking Wisdom: Reading, Writing, and Theological Reflection in the Life of the Pastor. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Aaron White is the Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in South Charleston, OH. He holds a PhD in New Testament Studies from Trinity College, Bristol University. He is the author or editor of multiple books, including Who Created Christianity: Fresh Approaches to the Relationship between Jesus and Paul. Aaron is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
