Word Biblical Commentary

There are many great commentaries available to us. Some are devotional, some are pastoral, and some are technical. I find that using a variety of these resources helps me as do my sermon prep. The Word Biblical Commentary Series by Zondervan has been very helpful to me in my study of God’s Word. Most of the contributors of this series are professors of universities or seminaries, which makes it a technical commentary. It is very academic and based on the biblical languages.

Format:

The way that this series is formatted is also very helpful. There is a bibliography section that gives great insight into modern scholarship and places to look outside of the series for more research. There is a form/structure/setting section that gives those things. This section really helped me understand more clearly why the author arranged that section of Scripture the way they did. Then the comments section which is based on the Greek and Hebrew. This section is very helpful for a clear exposition of the passage. After the comments section, there is another section called explanation that takes the information from the comments section and organizes the thought of the passage. This section was the one that was probably most helpful to me.

There is no pastoral commentary section and not much that talks about how the text applies to today, but that is not the intention of this series. This is a very academic commentary and requires some work in order to get things out of it. There is a lot of information, but if you take the time you will find this series to be very helpful in your study of the Scriptures.