Hodge's work on 1 and 2 Corinthians formed one of the most significant parts of a series of popular commentaries on the New Testament that he projected with J. A. Alexander in the 1850s.

When Alexander's early death prevented the series from being completed, the individual volumes were quickly prized in their own right and went through many editions on both sides of the Atlantic. Hodge avoids dated technical discussion and writes with a clarity that has kept the work in print for more than a century and a half.