Let’s Think Straight About Commentaries

Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton have written a thoughtful piece on the role of commentaries in Bible study: “Yes, Bring Commentaries to Bible Study.” I appreciate their willingness to push back on an idea we’ve trumpeted on this blog (though I doubt they have our blog specifically in mind):

Others have been warned that commentaries present a direct danger to their personal Bible study. Naysayers caution Christians that reading the words of others may prevent them from thinking their own thoughts and coming to their own conclusions about Scripture. The vital steps of observing the text and interpreting it for ourselves, they worry, may be missed if we allow others to do it for us.

The objection is initially well-stated: Commentaries indeed pose a direct danger to personal Bible study. I would only clarify that the danger is not that we’d allow commentaries to do the vital steps of observing and interpreting for us. The real danger is that the vital steps of observing and interpreting the text would go undone altogether—yet we wouldn’t notice on account of the secure embrace we feel from the opinions of the experts.

This is why we are more than eager to recommend good commentaries that promote observation, interpretation, and application of the text. We must remember that a commentary is like gasoline. It will get you where you want to go, if you possess a working engine. But if you’re prone to drinking it straight, you ought to label it as poison.

And this gets at the overwhelming agreement I have with Gordon and Blanton. Because they arrive at the same place I do, even if they’re more sensitive to different dangers along the way than I am:

Instead of preventing beneficial study, good commentaries can protect us from heretical interpretations, correct our personal biases, and help us come to the conclusions God intended when he wrote his Word. When used judiciously, these resources give rich, deep material for the Bible student, leading to informed observation, accurate interpretation, and appropriate personal application.

Commentaries also give us windows into the historical context of the people to whom the books were written…

Yes, we must still do the work of observing and interpreting the text. But with commentaries we can do so in an informed way, with a clearer understanding of the way the first hearers would’ve understood the passage…

Just as you would carefully select a Bible teacher or pastor for orthodoxy and trustworthiness, so you must be deliberate in your use of commentaries…

Read the Bible passage multiple times. Linger there before you open the commentary. Get a good idea of the story, teaching, or principles. Try to form a few questions—things you don’t understand or ideas you’d like to investigate. Then bring these questions to your commentary. Commentary writers—your brothers and sisters who have labored to understand the Word in a detailed and careful way—will help to clarify the text and encourage you as you read.

I couldn’t agree more if such regulations were shouted at me from atop Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. If more people used commentaries this way, I would lay my cloak at their feet to ease their journey. If it were the case that people used commentaries as conversation partners with regard to the text, instead of as teachers independent of the text, the world would be a happier place.

Gordon and Blanton model such wise use of commentaries for us. They give examples of how commentaries can help us to to find answers to our interpretive questions that are assumed in the text. I might argue that some of their other benefits of commentaries could simply be acquired by studying the text in context—though, once again, good commentaries will be helpful conversation partners, pointing out arguments or trains of thought we may have missed. There remains much to commend in this article.

Check it out!