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Commentaries on Jeremiah & Ezekiel

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by evangelist6589, Apr 26, 2012.

  1. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    As soon as I finish my Daniel & Revelation studies I am hitting these 2 books next. Dr. David Jeremiah is an excellent commentator and writes so that I am interested and not bored stiff. However for these next 2 books he has no commentators. I did some searching and discovered that Dr. Warren Wiersbe has some commentaries on these books and they appear to be written in a similar style as David Jeremiah's. The BE series are the commentaries by Warren Wiersbe. These are not theological commentaries (for that I have the NDBT book) but rather commentaries on the entire book. Has anyone ever gone through Warren's commentaries and what do you think? I have one of his books and it was excellent. Thanks..

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/1434766349/?tag=baptis04-20
     
  2. Martin Marprelate

    Martin Marprelate Well-Known Member
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    Commentaries on Jeremiah are hard to find and the Wiersbe one may be the best if you are looking for something concise. Otherwise there is a massive two-volume work by John Mackay published by Mentor which is very good.

    For Ezekiel, it will depend on whether you are Dispensational or not. That will effect the treatment of Chapters 40-48. If you take an Amillennial view, God Strengthens by Derek Thomas (Evangelical Press) is excellent, as is The Visions of Ezekiel by Patrick Fairbairn (Wakeman Books), but this is a reprint of a 19th Century book and the writing is rather dense and difficult for 21st Century readers. 19th Century Scottish Presbyterians never used one word when they could use five! I haven't read Wiersby on Ezekiel. He may be excellent for all I know.

    Steve
     
  3. asterisktom

    asterisktom Well-Known Member
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    Ouch I wrote all of my words below, thinking you were the other person I had written to (in another board!) about the Old Testament study. Oh well, I will still keep the comments below unedited, even though the Jeremiah you meant was David Jeremiah, not the Jeremiah.

    I think your goal here is a very worthy one. The in-depth study of a books like Ezekiel and Jeremiah are well worth the effort. May I suggest that you pass on the commentary and just get a couple of OT Bible tools? You can go a long ways with just a good concordance and something like Wilson's Old Testament Word Studies (the OT companion to the NT's Vine's, which is nowhere nearly as good).

    If you invest much time and study in a commentary on a book you will be imbibing that person's biases as well as his insights. I know we all think that we can always keep our critical objectivity, but it is hard to do. There is a subtle influence on us from those authors we trust most.

    I'm not saying never read commentaries, just that in the foundational first part of your study it is very, very helpful to not "confer with flesh and blood".
     
    #3 asterisktom, Apr 26, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2012
  4. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    I am Biblical and hold to Dispensational Premillenialism.
     
  5. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    I have Vines, a strongs concordance and what not. However the point of the commentary is to get me into the text. Sure David Jeremiah has made a few errors in his commentaries on Daniel & Revelation, but not many. His books are well worth the read as he gets you into the text and makes the books come alive. Reading these books in the ancient KJV without the aid of a god study Bible is kinda boring. The Crossway ESV SB is excellent and makes the text come alive and is far more interesting.
     
  6. asterisktom

    asterisktom Well-Known Member
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    That is ungrammatical. There needs to be a comma there ... wait, a period.
    Wait.... a new paragraph.
    Wait ... separate posts ... from different people. :smilewinkgrin:
     
  7. asterisktom

    asterisktom Well-Known Member
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    I often quote the KJV here online because it is convenient, but I didn't say anything about having to use it.

    More importantly: You're an evangelist ... and you need someone to jump-start your Bible?

    Oh well.
     
  8. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    If commentaries were worthless then there would not be so many of them.
     
  9. percho

    percho Well-Known Member
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    Probably anything we use is only as good as it soothes out itching ears.
     
  10. Martin Marprelate

    Martin Marprelate Well-Known Member
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    This is such pompous supercilious nonsense.
    There has been no greater evangelist in post-Biblical times than George Whitefield, yet he freely divulged that many of his sermons were highly dependent on Matthew Henry's commentaries. If you read through many of his sermons and compare them with Henry on the same text, you can see the similarities. That did not stop God blessing his ministry in a way that very few others have ever been blessed.

    You should definitely use commentaries. It is most important that you understand your text fully before you start preaching on it. Otherwise you may be led into such terrible soul-destroying errors as occasionally appear on this board. Of course you need to undestand (and I'm sure you do) that the Bible is God's word and a commentary is merely a help to understanding it, but it is the height of arrogance to suppose that one is of such superior intellect that one has nothing to learn from those who have gone before.

    Steve
     
  11. asterisktom

    asterisktom Well-Known Member
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    It is pretty ungracious for you to automatically cast everything I write in the worst possible light. I did not say for evangelist to not read commentaries at all, but to first of all, when starting a new study, to have a period when you are away from all commentaries and helps. This is not pomposity, but believing God teaches all believers through His Spirit.

    After one has given the new subject a period of careful study and prayer then, certainly, consult other works. But even then one must have a good balance of reading material, otherwise we merely reinforce our biases rather than objectively consider unconsidered perspectives.

    Evangelist is not considering a wide spectrum of reading sources, which is why I wrote the cautions that I did. However he, also misconstruing my comments, is starting a new thread as if I had said the very same thing that you accuse me of here.

    It is not arrogance and "pompous supercilious nonsense". It is trying to get him - and now you, brother - to be first and foremost a Berean.
     
  12. thomas15

    thomas15 Well-Known Member

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    I know whom I'm voting for "goofball of the year 2012"
     
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