A fairly new commentary series called the “Kerux Commentaries” is being published by Kregel Ministry. Herbert Bateman and Steven Smith are the coauthors of the Hebrews volume. The full title is Hebrews: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching.
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Hebrews: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching
Each volume in this series has an exegetical author (Bateman in this Hebrews volume) and a homiletical author (Steven W. Smith in this volume). I really appreciate this unique aspect of the series. Since the series is aimed at helping pastors and teachers, it makes good sense to have two authors pair up and provide the best of their training and skills in one book.
As a pastor and teacher myself, I absolutely loved this Hebrews volume! My shelves contain many excellent commentaries, but this series is definitely unique in comparison to the others. Every passage (or preaching unit) presents the following sections: Exegetical analysis (exposition), Theological focus, and Preaching/Teaching strategy.
Layout of Hebrews: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching
The layout of this book is exceptionally well done!
Each passage (we could call it a chapter) begins with a grayed-out page that contains the text at the very top (for example, Hebrews 5:11-6:12). Each of these summaries contains the following sections: the Exegetical Idea, the Theological Focus, and Preaching Idea, and Preaching Pointers. This is a one page summary of what will follow. (FYI: another great feature of this book is the overview of all preaching passages found in the beginning of the book which lists these categories for every single passage in the book).
Then the reader will find the Literary Structure and Themes section, usually a few paragraphs long.
That is followed by the exposition section, surely the longest section in each chapter. In this section, the reader will find each verse in bold, making it very easy to find a specific verse. The author uses the original Greek quite often (which, if you’re a pastor/teacher, you will surely enjoy that aspect, but if you’re not and you’ve never learned Greek, you’ll still be able to follow the argument of the author). He also utilizes many different English translations, another fine quality of the book.
There are also “Textual Analysis”, “Syntactical Analysis”, and other related sections that provide paragraph-long comments on these topics. I really enjoyed these sections, and I’m glad that they provided them. In addition to those sections, there are also many other wonderful features sprinkled throughout the book, such as charts, key questions for study groups, photographs, maps, sidebars with historical background and other info, and more.
Content of Hebrews: A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching
This volume contains so many excellent features! Now, the features themselves are great, but I haven’t yet mentioned the actual material itself. As with any commentary, the reader will certainly not agree with everything these two authors say. There were certainly times where I found myself wondering how the authors could possibly arrive at the conclusions that they did. And one of the worst aspects of the book is the way the authors constantly attribute authorship to Barnabas as if they knew for sure that he wrote it (which is really odd considering they did acknowledge in the intro that we can’t know for sure he wrote Hebrews). Some of their conclusions were wrong in my opinion, and some of the preaching ideas were ideas that I won’t be borrowing for my own sermons. But the book as whole is simply excellent, in the format and the material itself. I hope that many will pick it up and benefit from it!
Tolle lege, take up and read!
My thanks to Kregel Ministry for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. The opinions expressed are my own.
Matt became a joyful follower of Jesus at the age of 21. He is very grateful to be a husband to Lindsey, and a father to four boys. He is an ordained minister (teaching elder) in the PCA. He previously served as a pastor of biblical counseling and is currently a corporate chaplain in southern Delaware. Matt received his Master of Divinity degree in Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and holds an advanced certification in biblical counseling from the Association of Biblical Counselors. In his free time, he loves playing with his boys, traveling with his wife, and reading (and buying!) books.
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