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
After the death of Saul, David returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days.
“Now it came to pass ... - There is no break whatever between the two books of Samuel, the division being purely artificial.”
Then he begged me, ‘Stand over me and kill me, for agony has seized me, but my life still lingers.’
“Anguish - The Hebrew word used here occurs nowhere else, and is of doubtful meaning (compare the margin). The rabbis interpret it as a cramp or giddiness.”
They mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the people of the LORD and the house of Israel, because they had fallen…
“For Saul ... - David’s thoroughly patriotic and unselfish character is strongly marked here. He looked upon the death of Saul, and the defeat of Israel by a pagan foe, with unmixed sorrow, though it opened to him the way to the throne, and removed…”
And David inquired of the young man who had brought him the report, “Where are you from?” “I am the son of a foreigner,” he answered. “I am an Amalekite.”
“Whether David believed the Amalekite’s story, or not, his anger was equally excited, and the fact that the young man was an Amalekite, was not calculated to calm or check it. That David’s temper was hasty, we know from 1Sa 25:13, 1Sa 25:32-34.”
Then David took up this lament for Saul and his son Jonathan,
“The words lamented and lamentation must be understood in the technical sense of a funeral dirge or mournful elegy. (See similar dirges in 2Sa 3:33-34; and 2Ch 35:25.)”
O mountains of Gilboa, may you have no dew or rain, no fields yielding offerings of grain.
“Let there be no dew ... - For a similar passionate form of poetical malediction, compare Job 3:3-10; Jer 20:14-18.”
O daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, who clothed you in scarlet and luxury, who decked your garments with ornaments of gold.
“The women of Israel are most happily introduced. They who had come out to meet king Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music” in the day of victory, are now called to weep over him.”
How the mighty have fallen in the thick of battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights.
“How are the mighty fallen - The recurrenee of the same idea 2Sa 1:19, 2Sa 1:25, 2Sa 1:27 is perfectly congenial to the nature of elegy, since grief is fond of dwelling upon the particular objects of the passion, and frequently repeating them.”
Some time later, David inquired of the LORD, “Should I go up to one of the towns of Judah?” “Go up,” the LORD answered.
“Enquired of the Lord - Through Abiathar, the high priest. The death of Saul and Jonathan had entirely changed David’s position, and therefore he needed divine guidance how to act under the new circumstances in which he was placed. Compare the marginal references.”
and made him king over Gilead, Asher, Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin—over all Israel.
“The Ashurites - If the tribe of Asher, the verse indicates the order in which Abner recovered the different districts from the Philistines, and added them to the dominions of Ish-bosheth, beginning with Gilead, and then gradually adding, on the west of Jordan, first the…”
One day Abner son of Ner and the servants of Ish-bosheth son of Saul marched out from Mahanaim to Gibeon.
“This expedition to Gibeon may have been for the purpose of shifting his metropolis to his own tribe of Benjamin, and to his family place, “Gibeah of Saul,” close to Gibeon, with the further purpose of attacking the kingdom of David.”
So Joab son of Zeruiah, along with the servants of David, marched out and met them by the pool of Gibeon.
“On the east of the hill (El-jib, the ancient Gibeon) is a copious spring, which issues in a cave excavated in the limestone rock, so as to form a large reservoir.”
But Asahel refused to turn away; so Abner thrust the butt of his spear into his stomach, and it came out his back, and he fell dead on the spot.
“With the hinder end ... - i. e. the wooden end, which was more or less pointed to enable the owner to stick it in the ground 1Sa 26:7.”
“As surely as God lives,” Joab replied, “if you had not spoken up, the troops would have continued pursuing their brothers until morning.”
“Joab’s speech means either “unless thou hadst spoken (challenged us to fight, 2Sa 2:14), the people would have returned from the pursuit of their brethren (many hours ago, even) this morning;” or, “If thou hadst not spoken (asked for peace, 2Sa 2:26), surely the people…”
And all that night Abner and his men marched through the Arabah. They crossed the Jordan, marched all morning, and arrived at Mahanaim.
“Through the plain - See 1Sa 23:24. Bithron is unknown. From the expression all (the) Bithron, it seems likely that it is a tract of country, intersected by ravines lying on the east side of Jordan.”
Later, they took Asahel and buried him in his father’s tomb in Bethlehem. Then Joab and his men marched all night and reached Hebron at daybreak.
“Joab, having stopped the pursuit, passed the night with his army on the field of battle; the next morning he numbered the missing, and buried the dead; they carried the body of Asahel to Bethlehem and buried him there, and then joined David at Hebron.”
his second was Chileab, by Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel; his third was Absalom, the son of Maacah daughter of King Talmai of Geshur;
“Chileab - In the duplicate passage (see the margin.) David’s second son is called Daniel (God is my judge), a name given to him in commemoration of the death of Nabal 1Sa 25:39.”
his fourth was Adonijah, the son of Haggith; his fifth was Shephatiah, the son of Abital;
“Adonijah - The same who, when David was dying, aspired to the crown, and was put to death by Solomon. Shephatiah - “God is judge.” This is the same name as Jehoshaphat, only with the two elements composing it placed in inverted order.”
Meanwhile, Saul had a concubine named Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah. So Ish-bosheth questioned Abner, “Why did you sleep with my father’s concubine?”
“Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah - For the sequel of her history, see the marginal reference. Aiah, was an Edomite, or rather Horite name Gen 36:24.”
“Good,” replied David, “I will make a covenant with you. But there is one thing I require of you: Do not appear before me unless you bring Saul’s daughter Michal…
“David’s motive in requiring the restitution of Michal was partly his affection for her, and his memory of her love for him; partly the wish to wipe out the affront put upon him in taking away his wife, by obtaining her return; and partly, also…”
Now Abner conferred with the elders of Israel and said, “In the past you sought David as your king.
“Ye sought for David ... - Compare 1Sa 18:5. It was only by Abner’s great influence that the elders of Israel had been restrained hitherto from declaring for David, and this accounts for Ish-bosheth’s helpless submission to his uncle’s dictation.”
When Abner and twenty of his men came to David at Hebron, David held a feast for them.
“Twenty men - These were doubtless his official suite as Ish-bosheth’s envoy to conduct Michal to David, but privy and consenting to his intrigue with David. It is remarkable that not a word should be said about the meeting of David and Michal.”
So Joab went to the king and said, “What have you done? Look, Abner came to you. Why did you dismiss him? Now he is getting away!
“Joab saw that if Abner was reconciled to David, his own post as second in the state would be forfeited; and then with characteristic unscrupulosity he proceeded to take Abner’s life.”
As soon as Joab had left David, he sent messengers after Abner, who brought him back from the well of Sirah; but David was unaware of it.
“The well Sirah - Nowhere else mentioned; according to Josephus, about two and a half miles from Hebron.”
May it whirl over the heads of Joab and the entire house of his father, and may the house of Joab never be without one having a discharge or skin…
“The curse of David proves that Joab was not justified as blood-revenger or Goel 2Sa 3:27 in taking away Abner’s life. That leaneth on a staff - Rather, a crutch. The phrase denotes one lame or infirm.”