What Do I Expect From A Biblical Commentary?

     Commentaries on sacred scripture are important resources for the study of
God's word. They often contain useful  geographical, historical, lexical, and
practical information that it would take years to learn through the detailed study
of original and secondary literature.  But a biblical commentary should never be
the first court of appeal. The student should first become well  acquainted with
the Bible itself. Read, read, read. Study, study, study. Investigate the words of
the text. Study the immediate and remote context of the passage under scrutiny.
Examine all the books and/or letters penned the biblical writer. Try to determine
the overall picture of  the text you are studying. After you have attempted to
determine what you believe the text teaches, reading a commentary can be a
useful exercise. What do I expect from a biblical commentary?

     First, I will  state  what  I do not expect  from  a commentary. I do not
expect it to be perfect. If I demand a commentary  to be perfect, I will be
disappointed because  commentaries are written by human authors, and the
result is  an imperfect resource. Some of the worst commentaries are  written 
by men  with  high  academic credentials,  and some of the best are written
by men who are not graduates of Princeton, Harvard, and Yale.

     Next, I do not expect a commentary to necessarily agree with me. If I am
wrong in the conclusions I have reached, and if the writer of the commentary
agrees   with   me, then  both of    us  are  wrong. Neither  do  I  expect  a
commentary to make everything easy. The road  leading to knowledge has
encumbrances along the way.  I must be willing to climb the mountains, swim
the oceans, and crawl across the valleys in order to ascertain the information
I seek. I do not expect a commentary to answer all the questions. I should
be willing to mine the rich ore of divine truth. Not only will doing so give me
self satisfaction, it will also make the journey memorable.   

     Second, I do expect a commentary to respect the text, deal with it honestly,
and make me think through the text! If at the end of the day, a commentary
has made me think my way  through  the  text, my  journey  will  have  been
pleasantly successful. The commentaries I find most useful are the ones that
exegete the text, and tell why and how they arrived at their conclusions. That
friends, is what I expect from a biblical commentary.
                                                                                                        R. Daly
Copyright 2013