What is a Bible commentary and should I use one?

Every honest Bible reader hits passages that leave them scratching their head. Why does Paul mention a ‘thorn in the flesh’ without naming it? What exactly were phylacteries? Why does Leviticus spend so much time on skin diseases? Questions like these are natural, and they don’t signal a lack of faith—they signal that you’re actually paying attention to the text in front of you.

A Bible commentary exists to help with exactly this kind of question. It’s a book, or a set of books, in which a trained scholar or pastor works through a biblical book passage by passage, explaining historical background, original language details, literary structure, and theological meaning.

Good commentaries do several things well. They explain historical and cultural context you might otherwise miss—what a denarius was worth, why Samaritans and Jews avoided each other, what it meant to sit at someone’s right hand. They untangle difficult grammar or wording, especially in places where English translations must choose between several possible renderings of the original Hebrew or Greek. And they trace how a passage fits into the larger argument of the book it belongs to, so you’re not reading a single verse in isolation.

Commentaries also expose you to how faithful Christians across history and around the world have understood a passage, which guards against reading your own culture and assumptions into the text without realizing it.

The chief risk with commentaries isn’t that they’re dangerous in themselves; it’s that they can quietly become a substitute for reading the Bible directly. It’s possible to know what three different scholars say about Romans 8 while never having sat with Romans 8 itself long enough to let it shape your prayers. That’s a real loss, because Scripture, not commentary on Scripture, is what the Holy Spirit uses to renew your mind (Romans 12:2).

Commentators are also fallible. Even the best scholars disagree with each other, sometimes significantly, and every commentary reflects the author’s theological tradition and blind spots. Treating any single commentary as beyond question, rather than testing it against Scripture, inverts the proper order of authority.

The healthiest pattern is to read the passage yourself first, slowly, asking what it says and what questions it raises, before ever opening a commentary. Then bring your questions to a trusted commentary and let it inform, correct, or confirm your own reading. This mirrors exactly what the Bereans did with Paul’s teaching: they received it eagerly, but then examined the Scriptures daily to verify it for themselves (Acts 17:11).

It also helps to read more than one commentary on a difficult passage, especially when the interpretation affects an important doctrine, and to favor commentators known for careful handling of the original languages and a high view of Scripture’s authority over those known mainly for being provocative or trendy.

God has gifted the church with teachers across every generation, and a good commentary lets you sit, in a real sense, under centuries of faithful biblical scholarship without leaving your chair (Ephesians 4:11-12). There is real wisdom in not insisting on figuring out every difficult passage entirely alone, especially for beginners just learning to navigate Scripture. Nobody expects a new believer to untangle the chronology of Kings and Chronicles, or the historical background of Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh,’ entirely from scratch, and there’s no virtue in refusing help that generations of faithful scholars have carefully prepared (2 Corinthians 12:7).

It also helps to think about which kind of commentary fits your purpose. Devotional commentaries tend toward application and warmth, useful for daily reading. Exegetical commentaries dig deeply into grammar, structure, and original language detail, better suited for serious study or sermon preparation. Knowing the difference keeps you from grabbing a technical, academic volume when what you really wanted was a pastoral, readable guide for your morning quiet time, or vice versa.

Use commentaries the way you’d use a knowledgeable friend: valuable, worth consulting, but never the final word. Keep your Bible open on the desk and the commentary beside it, not the other way around, and let the Spirit-breathed text itself remain the standard by which every human explanation is measured (2 Timothy 3:16). Read this way, a commentary becomes exactly what it was meant to be: one more tool that sends you back into Scripture with clearer eyes, deeper roots, and a fuller love for the God who speaks through it.