While commenting on Jonah 2:2-9, a psalm of thanksgiving, Elizabeth Achtemeier says, "The basic meaning of 'to give thanks' in Hebrew thought was 'to confess,' and so God was not properly thanked until the deliverance was recounted in the congregation and it was inspired to praise God's name" (Achtemeier p. 271). I think that this is an excellent reminder of how thanksgiving is supposed to function. So often when we see God move on our behalf our thanksgiving is only uttered to him. But the ancient Israelites thought, I believe rightly, that we haven't properly thanked God until we have shared how God has wondrously worked with the rest of our believing (and unbelieving!) community and shared in a way which compels others to worship and praise God. God does not work in our lives for our benefit alone. He works that he may be glorified, and part of how he is glorified is through the praises of those who hear of his marvelous deeds.
When I write commentary reviews, one of my main goals is to assess how well the commentator hit the intended audience of the commentary and utilized the format of the commentary. This often necessitates cluttering up the post discussing issues of format. To eliminate that, I thought that I would make some general remarks about the format and audience of each of the series that appear in my reviews. Terms like liberal, conservative, etc. are not used pejoratively but simply as descriptors. Many of you are familiar with Jeremy Pierce's commentary series overview. If you don't see a particular series covered here, check out his post to see if it's reviewed there. I am making no attempt at covering every series, just the series that I use. Additionally, new series (such as the NCCS) have been started in the five years since he wrote his very helpful guide, so I thought that it might not be completely out of order to have another person tackle commentary series overviews. This…
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