[Christopher]

Hello! I feel I may be getting bogged down in commentary during my bible study.

Is there a general rule of thumb to follow when using commentaries in bible study? Is it possible to loose the message and get diverted from the meaning of scripture by using commentaries to much?

I guess I just want to be sure I'm not giving the scriptures a back seat.

Thanks for your time.

[SERay]

I sometimes use multiple commentaries, whereas there is often insight gained by one over another. It does become complicated when the printed page is resourced, whereas I formally found myself in a pile of books during study or content preparation.

Thanks to the internet, I no longer have to dig through my pastoral library and lug books to a pile on the floor. A desk or dining table was never enough space, I had to study on the floor. Although there are numerous resources online, providing multiple study materials in digital form, I find bible.cc to be the easiest for expediency and cross reference. Each scripture has 10 parallel bible commentaries below, reflecting on the passage reviewed. I have reduced the time to compile my sermon/study outlines down to about an hour.

Yes, a genuine in-depth study will divert time to trudging through various resources. You may find yourself pouring over a Greek or Hebrew Lexicon, then a short tango with a Thesaurus, or back to the Septuagint or Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to hash out one word or meaning. Next you might be further diverted to examine church history or studies that entail Patristic Theology. It is all good, but the diversions can run one into the bushes, with a significant loss of time and direction
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[Christopher]

Thank you for the time you took to answer that, and you did clear that up for me.

I did feel like I was being run into the bushes and loosing sight of the trees by the size of the forest, some of the commentary is so long winded I sometimes lost sight of what the point was that I was trying to make clear.

I just wanted to be sure it was not my imagination, thanks