Commentaries are an interesting blessing.  Most of us have access to various commentaries, both in print, perhaps in software form and online.  For some they can be a crutch that bears all the weight of their study – they simply look up what their favorite expert says about a passage and preach that (sometimes with all the grace of a person walking with one crutch and no legs!)  For others commentaries provide conversation partners – the opportunity to interact with an expert or two regarding their take on a passage.  For some commentaries can be both conversation partner and source of frustration.

Why frustration?  Well, often the commentaries we look in are too atomistic in their approach to the text.  They move from one word or phrase to the next with relatively little comment on the flow of the text, the flow of thought, the implications of the broader context.  Some commentaries become a source of word study information and grammatical analysis, but fall short of the discourse level awareness that we need in order to more fully understand and preach a passage.

So I am wondering . . . have you used a commentary recently that proved really helpful in your sermon preparation?  Not just in terms of the details, but also in terms of the flow of thought?  It could be a technical commentary from the NIGTC or WBC series, or a literary-driven work like Fokkelman’s voluminous work on Samuel, or it could be a “paperback” like Donald English’s little work on Mark for the BST series. Sometimes the paperbacks are more aware of flow of thought than the heavyweight commentary siblings on the shelf.  Anyway, we’d all be interested to read any recommendations for helpful commentaries – helpful conversation partners in the often lonely work of sermon preparation.