Book: The Book of Hebrews

Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990. 426 pages.

I’ve been reading and using F. F. Bruce’s commentary on Hebrews for the last few weeks, and it has to go back to the library tonight as I’ve exhausted my renewals, so I thought I’d write a few notes. For those acquainted with F. F. Bruce or the New International Commentary on the New Testament little comment is necessary. Essentially it’s what you would expect from that author in that series.

For those who are not acquainted with author and series, this commentary manages an excellent compromise between scholarly depth and value for the pastoral library. If you ignore the footnotes you will find a great deal to incorporate into your expository teaching. The footnotes tend to bring in a great deal of technical detail that will be of interest only to those who know Greek or the various disciplines of Biblical criticism.

This is an evangelical commentary which comes through especially in the application. It does not shy away from critical issues, however. Note that this is one of the older volumes, and so is based not on the NIV, but rather on the RSV and NEB. I do not, however, consider it too far out of date to be extremely useful.

Generally I commend this commentary to the library of pastors or teachers who have a fair amount of background in Biblical studies. Biblical languages are optional, but will allow you to make more use of footnotes and some of the more advanced material. Pastors can expect to find useful material for sermons quickly and easily.