Commentary Review: Blomberg & Kamell on James

I recent­ly received a review copy of the Zon­der­van Exeget­i­cal Com­men­tary on James by Craig Blomberg and Mari­am Kamell.

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed to receive this book for two rea­sons:

• I like Craig Blomberg. He’s a care­ful schol­ar.
• I don’t have any com­men­taries on James beyond Thomas Con­sta­ble’s free com­men­tary. Side note: Con­sta­ble offers a wealth of knowl­edge on most books of the Bible. If you’re a Bible study leader or a new min­is­ter on a bud­get, you should down­load his notes.

So here’s my take on the com­men­tary:

1. It’s nice and short. This is a plus, not a minus. Too many com­men­taries today run to the thou­sands of pages. This vol­ume is long enough to help­ful­ly explain puz­zling aspects of the text with­out being so mas­sive that the cen­tral mes­sage gets lost.
2. It pays atten­tion to usabil­i­ty. For exam­ple: the com­men­tary on each verse is pre­ced­ed by a bold­ed Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the verse fol­lowed by the Greek text. Con­trast this with most com­men­taries that seem to assume you’ve got three or four books open on your desk (or win­dows on your mon­i­tor) at once (view the expla­na­tion of James 1:2 to see what I mean).
3. It keeps you ori­ent­ed. Every sec­tion begins with an out­line of the sur­round­ing text and an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly clear gram­mat­i­cal out­line that makes the author’s argu­ment clear. You can see a sam­ple page at Google Books (click that link — seri­ous­ly).
4. The com­men­tary ends with a very help­ful sum­ma­ry of the over­all the­ol­o­gy of the book of James — some­thing I wish more com­men­taries did. The dis­ci­pline of Bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy would be much rich­er if that were the case.
5. It uses foot­notes. Yay!
6. I dug into some of the more puz­zling vers­es in James and thought that Blomberg & Kamell explained them with clar­i­ty and wis­dom. Dis­claimer: I have not read this com­men­tary all the way through.

Over­all, I rec­om­mend this com­men­tary if you need to preach or teach on James any­time soon and urge you to look care­ful­ly at the oth­er vol­umes in the series as reviews on them become avail­able (the linked web­site — bestcommentaries.com — is, in my opin­ion, the best place to begin search­ing for a com­men­tary).

Thanks for the free­bie, Zon­der­van! I would have told the truth if your com­men­tary was lack­lus­ter, but I am delight­ed to report that this is a sol­id expo­si­tion of the book of James.