The primary tools for determining word meanings are Greek and Hebrew grammar and lexicons. Depending upon how technical the commentaries add in more detail concerning the various interpretations and contextual information. Language tools are powerful in how they communicate possible meanings and grammar construction. Commentaries range in quality with the more technical giving more contextual information and a summation of interpretations prior to its publication. The limitations faced by language tools and most commentaries is that they are confined with their approach. If the writer being commented on follows a different approach or changes their approach, the tools will remain consistent within their approach. These tools become less important when you can see how the source text uses the word or phrase and how the author tweaked them. We now have a means of both isolating possible meanings and excluding meanings by exploring the thought process from draft to draft.
When and how a phrase comes into a book is more important than its lexical meaning or grammatical structure. How and why the Lamb came into Revelation is more important than the definition of the Lamb. How the scroll came into Revelation and was split into two or how Satan became the red dragon is more important than any lexical definitions could ever be for them. There are literally hundreds more that could be mentioned and what is worse is that outside of GLR there are hundreds of scholarly opinions for what each word or phrase’s meaning is, which is an incredibly misguided waste of time and effort.