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Bible Study Toolbox: The Value of Commentaries
Bible Study Toolbox
The Value of Commentaries
Commentaries are basically written Bible classes and sermons. They are comments written in book form by authors who have studied for years, sometimes decades, to understand a particular text of Scripture. They have tremendous value for the following reasons:
1) They give insight into historical context. Commentaries are written by Bible scholars or, at the very least, by people who have studied the Bible for a long time. They generally know things about the text I don’t. They know the original languages, customs of the day, and facts about history and geography. All that information enlightens my understanding of the original context.
2) They give insight into the text itself. I have a “Romans” commentary by Gareth Reese that’s 828 pages long! It’s safe to say Reese knows much more than I do about Romans. He can easily identify the outline of the book, the major themes, the date, the historical context, the author. He can lay out the multiple positions people take on how to interpret tough passages and the pros and cons for each. True he’s just a man and I need to take his writings with a grain of salt. I always compare commentaries against the true standard of God’s Word, but he can provide deep insight into the text it might have taken me years to discover on my own.
3) They use illustrations I may have never heard. Have you ever listened to a sermon and the preacher told a story you had never heard before, but it perfectly illustrated the text you were studying? That happens with commentaries too. I might have trouble understanding a verse, but a well placed illustration can make it so clear!
4) They bring out applications from the text I might miss. The authors who write commentaries are all different people from different upbringings. They’ve seen and experienced things I haven’t. They’re reading from the same Scriptures, but they’ve applied them in a different time, place, and cultural context from my own. My ideas for practical application may be good, but there may be other applications I’m missing.
5) They can correct my errors. Sometimes I want to use a verse because it seems perfect for the point I want to make in a sermon. Then when I start opening commentaries to gain additional insight, I find that verse didn’t mean what I thought it meant. It’s annoying to be proved wrong, but it’s a safeguard for me against error.
6) I can correct their errors. Commentaries are written by fallible human authors, which means I often find errors in their material. That helps me because it introduces me to a different way of thinking about a text and why a person thinks that way, then challenges me to know why they’re wrong. When I understand error, I can better understand how to defeat it with truth.
