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
They are also to fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given a virgin of Israel a bad…
“The fine was to be paid to the father, because the slander was against him principally as the head of the wife’s family. If the damsel were an orphan the fine reverted to herself.”
No man with crushed or severed genitals may enter the assembly of the LORD.
“Compare Lev 21:17-24. Such persons, exhibiting a mutilation of that human nature which was made in God’s image, were rejected from the covenant entirely. However, they could be proselytes (compare Act 8:27).”
No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even to the tenth generation.
“This law forbids only the naturalization of those against whom it is directed. It does not forbid their dwelling in the land; and seems to refer rather to the nations than to individuals.”
You are not to seek peace or prosperity from them as long as you live.
“i. e. “thou shalt not invite them robe on terms of amity with thee (compare Deu 20:10 ff), nor make their welfare thy care”: compare Ezr 9:12.”
Do not despise an Edomite, for he is your brother. Do not despise an Egyptian, because you lived as a foreigner in his land.
“The Edomite, as descended from Esau the twin brother of Jacob (compare Deu 2:4), and the Egyptian, as of that nation which had for long shown hospitality to Joseph and his brethren, were not to be objects of abhorrence.”
When you are encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep yourself from every wicked thing.
“The whole passage refers not to the encampments of the nation while passing from Egypt through the wilderness, but to future warlike expeditions seat out from Canaan.”
Do not return a slave to his master if he has taken refuge with you.
“The case in question is that of a slave who fled from a pagan master to the holy land. It is of course assumed that the refugee was not flying from justice, but only from the tyranny of his lord.”
No daughter or son of Israel is to be a shrine prostitute.
“Compare the marginal reference. Prostitution was a common part of religious observances among idolatrous nations, especially in the worship of Ashtoreth or Astarte. Compare Mic 1:7; Baruch 6:43.”
If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court to be judged, so that the innocent may be acquitted and the guilty condemned.
“Render it: (1) If there be a controversy between men, and they come to judgment, and the judges judge them, and justify the righteous and condemn the wicked (compare the marginal reference. and Exo 23:7; Pro 17:15); (2) then it shall be, etc.”
He may receive no more than forty lashes, lest your brother be beaten any more than that and be degraded in your sight.
“The Jews to keep within the letter of the law fixed 39 stripes as the maximum (compare the marginal reference.).”
When brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the widow must not marry outside the family.
“The law of levirate marriage. The law on this subject is not unique to the Jews, but is found (see Gen 38:8) in all essential respects the same among various Oriental nations, ancient and modern.”
you are to cut off her hand. You must show her no pity.
“This is the only mutilation prescribed by the Law of Moses, unless we except the retaliation prescribed as a punishment for the infliction on another of bodily injuries Lev 24:19-20.”
You shall not have two differing weights in your bag, one heavy and one light.
“Honesty in trade, as a duty to our neighbor, is emphatically enforced once more (compare Lev 19:35-36). It is noteworthy that John the Baptist puts the like duties in the forefront of his preaching (compare Luk 3:12 ff); and that “the prophets” (compare Eze 45:10-12…”
When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you take possession of it and settle in it,
“Two liturgical enactments having a clear and close reference to the whole of the preceding legislation, form a most appropriate and significant conclusion to it, namely, (1) the formal acknowledgment in deed and symbol of God’s faithfulness, by presentment of a basket filled with firstfruits…”
and you are to declare before the LORD your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt few in number and lived there and became…
“A Syrian ready to perish was my father - The reference is shown by the context to be to Jacob, as the ancestor in whom particularly the family of Abraham began to develop into a nation (compare Isa 43:22, Isa 43:28, etc.).”
The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these statutes and ordinances. You must be careful to follow them with all your heart and with all your soul.
“A brief and earnest exhortation by way of conclusion to the second and longest discourse of the book. Deu 26:17 Thou hast avouched - literally, “made to say:” so also in the next verse.”
Then Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Keep all the commandments I am giving you today.
“Moses in a third discourse Deut. 27–30, proceeds more specifically to dwell upon the sanctions of the Law. In these chapters he sets before Israel in striking and elaborate detail the blessings which would ensue upon faithfulness to the covenant, and the curses which disobedience…”
Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with…
“All the words of this law - i. e. all the laws revealed from God to the people by Moses, regarded by the Jews as 613 (compare Num 15:38 note).”
On that day Moses commanded the people:
“Compare Jos 8:32-35. The solemnity was apparently designed only for the single occasion on which it actually took place. Deu 27:12, Deu 27:13 The tribes appointed to stand on Gerizim to bless the people all sprang from the two wives of Jacob, Leah and Rachel.”
“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will…
“A comparison of this chapter with Exo 23:20-23 and Lev. 26 will show how Moses here resumes and amplifies the promises and threats already set forth in the earlier records of the Law.”
If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you…
“The curses correspond in form and number Deu 28:15-19 to the blessings Deu 28:3-6, and the special modes in which these threats should be executed are described in five groups of denunciations Deut. 28:20-68. Deu 28:20-26 First series of judgments.”
So keep and follow the words of this covenant, that you may prosper in all you do.
“That ye may prosper - literally, “that ye may act wisely.” The connection of the two ideas of wisdom in conduct and prosperity in circumstances is noteworthy.”
your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water—
“The covenant was national, and therefore embraced all the elements which make up the nation. The “little ones” would of course be represented by their parents or guardians; the absent Deu 29:15 by those present; nor were the servants and proselytes to be excluded (compare…”
because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of…
“Compare on the thought Jer 23:17. The secret and presumptuous sinner is meant who flatters himself that all is well and will be well with him, since he follows his own devices and prospers. Compare Psa 73:11 ff.”
All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah…
“The description is borrowed from the local features of the Dead Sea and its vicinity. The towns of the vale of Siddim were fertile and well watered (compare Gen 13:10) until devastated by the wrath of God Gen 19:24-25.”