Proclaimer Blog
Useful Hebrews commentaries
I'm just preaching on Hebrews at the moment and there are lots of commentaries to choose from. Here are some I've found particularly useful:
- the best one volume commentary seems to be Peter O'Brien's Pillar volume. Not cheap, but very thorough.
- O'Brien does reference FF Bruce a lot. Some find him a bit superficial, but he does deal with most of the issues. The revised version is better.
- Ray Stedman's smaller volume in the IVP New Testament Commentary series is perhaps one of the best short commentaries.
- For a simple accompanying book, Stuart Olyott's "I wish someone would explain Hebrews to me" is hard to beat, though sometimes the application feels a little straightjacketed. We have sold this en masse at church to accompany our series.
- Leon Morris has contributed the volume to the Expositor's Bible Commentary and so this is a useful addition if you can get hold of it separately.
On the other hand, there are some excellent commentaries that are harder to use when preaching. Chief among these is John Owen's excellent set – very thorough and containing a series of thematic lectures as well as verse by verse exposition. But, on the whole, they are too dense to be of practical use to a preacher unless he has a lot of time to read around. Shame, because there's gold dust here. I've also got Westcott (hmm), the CFP focus on the Bible volume by Walter Riggans (not one of the strongest), Let's Study Hebrews by Hywel Jones (better) and one or two smaller volumes which tend to skip over quite critical trains of thought. You really need a comprehensive commentary.
So, if it was going to be just one it would probably be Peter O'Brien.