Logos is offering the Word Bible Commentary for 65% off from August 30 to September 3, 2019. In print, this full set would retail at $1200, Logos has it for $399 for five days only. You could not get the series for this price if you pick up used copies in the used section of your local book store.
The Word Bible Commentary was originally published by Word and was acquired by Thomas Nelson. In 2014 Harper Collins bought Thomas Nelson so the Word series now published by Zondervan Academic. As I have often observed, some of the older commentaries in the series are not particularly useful (for example, the Micah–Malachi covers too many books in a relatively short book, often with not much in the way of commentary!)
Since Zondervan took over the series, several revised and second editions have appeared, including Ralph Martins 2 Corinthians (reviewed here) and Trent Bulter’s two-volume Joshua commentary (my JESOT review is here). Some revised volumes were finished before Zondervan took over, including the first volume of Deuteronomy, two Psalms volumes, two Isaiah volumes, and Philippians. G. R. Beasley-Murray’s Gospel of John commentary is considered a second edition.
There are several classic commentaries in the series I would consider “must haves.” For example: Donald Hagner’s two volume Matthew commentary, John Nolland’s three volumes on Luke, Craig Evans on Mark 8:27-16:20, Andrew Lincoln on Ephesians, James Dunn on Romans (two volumes), and David Aune on Revelation (three volumes!); in the Old Testament, David Clines has three volumes on Job, J. N. D. Watts on Isaiah (two volumes) and John Goldingay on Daniel.
The format of the Word series is unique. Each section begins with a bibliography for the section (including articles in German and French). Students can “copy and paste” these into their own bibliography as they research a passage. The author then provides their own translation with notes on the text (variants and translation issues). Then the commentary has a section entitled “Form/Structure/Setting.” Some of this is a throwback to form criticism, but usually the commentator discusses the poetic and literary features of the section and sets the section into the overall context of the book. Following the section on structure is a phrase-phrase commentary touching on key lexical and syntactical issues in the Hebrew or Greek text as well as historical and cultural features necessary for understanding the text. Following the commentary proper is a short section entitled “explanation.” Here the author offers thoughts on the theology of the section, often drawing some brief application from the text.
If you do not have the Logos software, you should at least download the free Logos Basic or the $99 Logos 8 Fundamentals (currently on sale for 20%, so $79).
With either minimal package you can download and use the free book every month and build your Logos library. Logos Bible Software 8 is a significant upgrade to this powerful Bible study system. I did a “first look” review of Logos 8 here. The software runs much more efficiently than the previous version, that alone is worth the upgrade. Everything seems to run faster than Logos 7 and the upgrade is well worth considering.