Voices and influences
Albert Barnes
The Philadelphia pastor who rose at four every morning to write Bible notes for his own Sunday school, and sold a million volumes of them.
Summary
This site quotes Albert Barnes 8,265 times across 66 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived 1798 to 1870.
- Quoted here most in Isaiah: 746 of 8,265.
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Albert Barnes
- Lived
- 1798 to 1870
- Tradition
- Presbyterian
5 of 8,265 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Albert Barnes died in 1870 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts - Interpreters have differed in regard to the connection of this verse with the preceding.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Undated in the archive this site cites.
The rest of the quotation
It is evident, I think, that it is properly connected with the subject of pardon; and the sense must be, that the plans and purposes of God in regard to forgiveness are as far above those of people as the heavens are higher than the earth, Isa 55:
Isaiah 55:8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. BSB
He hath shewed thee - Micah does not tell them now, as for the first time; which would have excused them. He says, “He hath shewed thee;” He, about whose mind and will and pleasure they were pretending to enquire, the Lord their God.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Undated in the archive this site cites.
The rest of the quotation
He had shewn it to them. The law was full of it. He shewed it to them, when He said, “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him and to serve the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command thee this day for thy good?” Deu 10:12-13. They had asked, “with what outward thing shall I come before the Lord;” the prophet tells them, “what thing is good,” the inward man of the heart, righteousness, love, humility. And what doth the Lord require (search, seek) of thee? - The very word implies an earnest search within. He would say (Rup.), “Trouble not thyself as to any of these things, burnt-offerings, rams, calves, without thee. For God seeketh not thine, but thee; not thy substance, but thy spirit; not ram or goat, but thy heart.” : “Thou askest, what thou shouldest offer for thee? Other thyself. For what else doth the Lord seek of thee, but thee? Because, of all earthly creatures, He hath made nothing better than thee, He seeketh thyself from thyself, because thou hadst lost thyself.” To do judgment - are chiefly all acts of equity; “to love mercy,” all deeds of love. Judgment, is what right requires; mercy, what love. Yet, secondarily, “to do judgment” is to pass righteous judgments in all cases; and so, as to others, “judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” Joh 7:24; and as to one’s self also. Judge equitably and kindly of others, humbly of thyself. […]
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? BSB
(Compare Exo. 39:1-31.) Moses is now commanded to commit all that pertains to the offerings made to the Lord in the sanctuary to the exclusive charge of the members of a single family, who were to hold their office from generation to generation.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Undated in the archive this site cites.
The rest of the quotation
In the patriarchal times, the external rites of worship had generally been conducted by the head of the tribe or family, in accordance with the principle involved in the dedication of the firstborn Exo 13:2; Num 3:12-
Exodus 28:1 “Next, have your brother Aaron brought to you from among the Israelites, along with his sons Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, to serve Me as priests. BSB
The leper was to carry about with him the usual signs of mourning for the dead. Compare Lev 10:6 and margin reference.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Undated in the archive this site cites.
The rest of the quotation
The leper was a living parable in the world of the sin of which death was the wages; not the less so because his suffering might have been in no degree due to his own personal deserts: he bore about with him at once the deadly fruit and the symbol of the sin of his race. Exo 20:
Leviticus 13:45 A diseased person must wear torn clothes and let his hair hang loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ BSB
Chambers - (Margin, floors). Rather, a lean-to, which completely surrounded three sides of the building, the north, the west, and the south.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Undated in the archive this site cites.
1 Kings 6:5 Against the walls of the temple and the inner sanctuary, Solomon built a chambered structure around the temple, in which he constructed the side rooms. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Albert Barnes 8,265 times across 66 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Albert Barnes was born at Rome, New York, on December 1, 1798. He was headed for the law. At Hamilton College he was converted, changed direction, and went to Princeton Theological Seminary instead, graduating in 1824. His first pastorate was Morristown, New Jersey, from 1825 to 1830. In 1830 he was called to the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, where he preached until 1867 — thirty-seven years in one pulpit. The habit that made him famous was the alarm clock. Barnes rose at four every morning and wrote until nine, before the day's pastoral work began. What he wrote were notes on the Bible for his own Sunday school teachers and Bible class — plain explanations, verse by verse, aimed at people with no Greek and no library. He published them, beginning with the Gospels in 1832. They did not stop. Notes, Explanatory and Practical eventually covered the whole New Testament and much of the Old — Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel — and sold more than a million volumes in his lifetime, an astonishing number for the period. Generations of American laymen learned their Bible out of Barnes. He was also tried for heresy. His 1829 sermon The Way of Salvation, and then his notes on Romans in 1835, were charged with departing from the Westminster Confession on original sin and the atonement; Barnes taught that Christ's death was a provision made for all rather than a payment restricted in advance to the elect. The Presbytery of Philadelphia suspended him from the ministry in 1835, and the General Assembly reversed the suspension in 1836. He was acquitted, but the fight was one of the fuses of the Old School–New School division that split the American Presbyterian church in 1837. Barnes stood on the New School side. He fought slavery hard and early. An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery (1846) took up the biblical arguments the Southern churches used and dismantled them one at a time; The Church and Slavery followed in 1857. The books were read widely in the North during the years the country came apart. His eyesight failed badly in later life, and he kept working with help. He resigned the pulpit in 1867 and died in Philadelphia on December 24, 1870, at seventy-two. What he left is unusual for a scholar. Not a monument — a tool. A working pastor's commentary, written before breakfast for people who had no one else to explain the text, still in print and still free more than a century and a half later. Sources: Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the New Testament and An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery; the published minutes of the Presbyterian General Assembly, 1835–1837; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church; George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.
8,265 quotations across 66 books
Where this voice is quoted
But they would not listen, and they stiffened their necks like their fathers, who did not believe the LORD their God.
“To “harden” or “stiffen the neck” is a common Hebrew expression significative of unbending obstinacy and determined self-will. See the marginal references.”
They rejected His statutes and the covenant He had made with their fathers, as well as the decrees He had given them.
“As idols are “vanity” and “nothingness,” mere weakness and impotence, so idolators are “vain” and impotent. Their energies have been wasted, their time misspent; they have missed the real object of their existence; their whole life has been a mistake; and the result is utter…”
They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole.
“In 2Ki 17:10 there is a reference to the old high-place worship, which was professedly a worship of Yahweh, but with unauthorized rites and emblems; here the reference is to Ahab’s setting up a grove to Baal in the city of Samaria (marginal reference).”
and even Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but lived according to the customs Israel had introduced.
“This verse and the next are parenthetical. Here again, as in 2Ki 17:13, the writer is led on from his account of the sins and punishment of the Israelites to glance at the similar sins and similar punishment of the Jews.”
So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence.
“All the seed of lsrael - The Jews, i. e. as well as the Israelites. God’s dealings with both kingdoms were alike.”
When the LORD had torn Israel away from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king, and Jeroboam led Israel away from following the LORD and caused…
“The strong expression “drave Israel” is an allusion to the violent measures whereto Jeroboam had recourse in order to stop the efflux into Judea of the more religious portion of his subjects 2Ch 11:13-16, the calling in of Shishak, and the permanent assumption of a…”
Finally, the LORD removed Israel from His presence, as He had declared through all His servants the prophets.
“As he had said by all his servants the prophets - The writer refers not only to the extant prophecies of Moses (Lev 26:33; Deu 4:26-27; Deu 28:36, etc.), Ahijah the Shilohite (marginal reference), Hosea Hos 9:3, Hos 9:17, and Amos Amo 7:17, but also…”
Now when the settlers first lived there, they did not worship the LORD, so He sent lions among them, which killed some of them.
“The depopulation of the country, insufficiently remedied by the influx of foreigners, had the natural consequence of multiplying the wild beasts and making them bolder.”
Then the king of Assyria commanded: “Send back one of the priests you carried off from Samaria, and have him go back to live there and teach the requirements of…
“Carry one of the priests ...; let them go and dwell there, and let him teach - The double change of number is curious; but rise text needs no emendation.”
Thus one of the priests they had carried away came and lived in Bethel, and he began to teach them how they should worship the LORD.
“The priest sent to the colonists was not a true Yahweh-priest, but one of those who had been attached to the calf-worship, probably at Bethel. Hence, he would be willing to tolerate the mixed religion, which a true Yahweh-priest would have unsparingly condemned.”
Nevertheless, the people of each nation continued to make their own gods in the cities where they had settled, and they set them up in the shrines that the people…
“The “Samaritans” here are the Israelites. The temples built by them at the high places 1Ki 12:31; 1Ki 13:32 had remained standing at the time of their departure. They were now occupied by the new-comers, who set up their own worship in the old sanctuaries.”
the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech the gods of Sepharvaim.
“Nibhaz and Tartak are either gods of whom no other notice has come down to us, or intentional corruptions of the Babylonian names Nebo and Tir, the great god of Borsippa, who was the tutelar deity of so many Babylonian kings.”
They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods according to the customs of the nations from which they had been carried away.
“Understand the passage thus: “They (the colonists) served their own gods after the manner of the nations from which they (the government) removed them,” i. e., after the manner of their own countrymen at home.”
To this day they are still practicing their former customs. None of them worship the LORD or observe the statutes, ordinances, laws, and commandments that the LORD gave the descendants…
“They fear not the Lord - The new-comers in one sense feared Yahweh 2Ki 17:33, 2Ki 17:41. They acknowledged His name, admitted Him among their gods, and kept up His worship at the high place at Bethel according to the rites instituted by Jeroboam 2Ki…”
And you must always be careful to observe the statutes, ordinances, laws, and commandments He wrote for you. Do not worship other gods.
“Which he wrote for you - It is worth observing here, first, that the author regards the whole Law as given to the Israelites in a written form; and secondly, that he looks on the real writer as God.”
So these nations worshiped the LORD but also served their idols, and to this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.
“Their graven images - The Babylonians appear to have made a very sparing use of animal forms among their religious emblems.”
In the third year of the reign of Hoshea son of Elah over Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz became king of Judah.
“In the third year - If Hoshea ascended the throne toward the close of the 12th year of Ahaz 2Ki 17:1, and if Ahaz reigned not much more than 15 years 2Ki 16:2, the first of Hezekiah might synchronise in part with Hoshea’s third year.”
He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah.
“Twenty and five years old was he - This statement, combined with that of 2Ki 16:2, would make it necessary that his father Ahaz should have married at the age of 10, and have had a child born to him when he was 11 years…”
And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done.
“He did that which was right ... - This is said without qualification of only three kings of Judah, Asa 1Ki 15:11, Hezekiah, and Josiah 2Ki 22:2. See some details of Hezekiah’s acts at the commencement of his reign in 2 Chr. 29, etc.”
Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. No king of Judah was like him, either before him or after him.
“After him was none like him - The same is said of Josiah (marginal reference). The phrase was probably proverbial, and was not taken to mean more than we mean when we say that such and such a king was one of singular piety.”
He remained faithful to the LORD and did not turn from following Him; he kept the commandments that the LORD had given Moses.
“Other good kings, as Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Joash, and Amaziah, had fallen away in their later years. Hezekiah remained firm to the last. The phrase “cleaving to God” is frequent in Deuteronomy, but rare elsewhere.”
And the LORD was with Hezekiah, and he prospered wherever he went. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and refused to serve him.
“The Lord was with him - This had been said of no king since David (marginal reference). The phrase is very emphatic. The general prosperity of Hezekiah is set forth at some length by the author of Chronicles 2Ch 32:23, 2Ch 32:27-”
In the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which was the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea son of Elah over Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and…
“These verses repeat the account given in the marginal reference. The extreme importance of the event may account for the double insertion.”
In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah.
“In the fourteenth year - This note of time, which places the invasion of Sennacherib eight years only after the capture of Samaria, is hopelessly at variance with the Assyrian dates for the two events, the first of which falls into the first of Sargon…”
So Hezekiah king of Judah sent word to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand from…
“Return from me - Or “retire from me,” i. e., “withdraw thy troops.” Three hundred talents ... - According to Sennacherib’s own account, the terms of peace were as follows: (1) A money payment to the amount of 800 talents of silver and 30 talents…”