Best Commentaries on Matthew

Brown excels in everything a church Bible teacher would want to know and communicate. Her streamlined commentary includes faithful perspectives on disputed issues and worthwhile suggestions for how to teach the text. The commentary is easy to understand and abreast of the latest scholarship.

France’s commentary is an abridged edition of his massive scholarly work in the NICNT series (see below). The fruit of his more detailed research appears here in summary form for greater accessibility.

For profound insights, accurate applications, helpful outlines, and memorable quotes, this commentary is timeless.

Bruner is exegetically insightful, historically engaging, and full of lovely quotes, thoughtful expressions, and brilliant turns of phrase. This commentary is a gold mine for the preacher and lay leader alike.

A staple in college and seminary libraries and in pastors’ studies worldwide, Carson’s volume marshals the most current evangelical scholarship. His commentary features detailed outlines, insightful expositions of passages, and overviews that illuminate the big picture. Carson masterfully balances details and readability.

Osborne excels with this series’s format—literary context, outline based on the structure of the Greek but translated into English, the main idea of each passage of preachable length, verse-by-verse commentary, and best of all, wonderful and incisive insights into “Theology in Application.”

Quarles’ commentary displays the fruit of the detailed analysis of the Greek text but focuses primarily on the theological implications of Matthew’s Gospel. This commentary will be a great help to expositors who want proclaim the great doctrines of the Christian faith from Matthew.

A comprehensive three-volume work. These non-evangelical commentaries are technical and bring together the relevant aids to exegesis: linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological. Mathison says that for those doing “exhaustive study . . . the work of Davies and Allison is indispensable.”

France’s commentary may be the best single-volume commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for the pastor-scholar who is proficient in Greek. It doesn’t require a mastery of Greek but proficiency enables one to use it to full effect. The commentary presents a detailed discussion of the text that is the product of a lifetime of study and is attentive to the theological implications of each section. There are few things France has not considered in Matthew, and all his mature reflection, scholarly erudition, and pastoral wisdom help an exegetically-minded pastor think carefully about the text.

A fantastic resource for the language-proficient pastor preaching through Matthew week by week. Nolland’s commentary is careful, precise, learned, and researched. His work is exegetically observant, thorough, and wise.