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
And there I saw the glory of the God of Israel, like the vision I had seen in the plain.
“The glory of the Lord having departed from His seat between the cherubims in the holy of holies (see Eze 9:3) rests in the threshold of the temple, to execute vengeance before it quits the house altogether Eze 10:18.”
Then He brought me to the entrance to the court, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall.
“The door of the court - The seer is brought to another spot. In Ezekiel’s time there were various buildings on the space around the inner court which formed a court or courts, not improbably enclosed by a wall.”
Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them.
“Seventy men - Compare Exo 24:9-10. The vision may have pointed to the contrast between the times. The number “seven” is symbolic of the covenant between Yahweh and His people, and so the “seventy” men exhibit forcibly the breach of the covenant.”
“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own…
“In the dark - Hidden in the secret places which the seer dug through the wall to discover. Chambers of his imagery - i. e., chambers painted with images.”
“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they…
““Violence” represents sin against man, “abominations” sins against God. These went hand in hand in Jerusalem. And have returned - After the reformation effected for a time by Josiah’s zeal, they have gone back to their old state.”
Then the glory of the God of Israel rose from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple.
“Cherub - The singular is put collectively for the “cherubim,” which were upon the mercy-seat of the ark in the holy of holies, the proper seat of the glory of the Lord in the midst of Israel.”
Now when the man went in, the cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple, and a cloud filled the inner court.
“On the right side - On the south Eze 47:2. The idolatries had been seen on the north side. On the south stood the “cherubim” ready to receive and bear away the glory of the Lord.”
Then one of the cherubim reached out his hand and took some of the fire that was among them.
“One cherub - The “cherub” who stood next the wheel by the side of which the man stood. The representative of the priestly office now gives up his post of reconciliation, and becomes simply a minister of wrath; another sign that God will turn from…”
When they moved, they would go in any of the four directions, without turning as they moved.
“The head - Either “the leading wheel which the others followed,” or more probably, the head of a cherub (one for all), the description passing from the wheels to the cherubim Eze 10:12.”
When the cherubim moved, the wheels moved beside them, and even when they spread their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not veer away from their side.
“are a repetition of the general description of the nature and connection of the various parts of the vision, and this is the more appropriate as showing why they were regarded as “one living creature” Eze 10:15.”
As I watched, the cherubim lifted their wings and rose up from the ground, with the wheels beside them as they went.
“The cherubim (or chariot) had stood first on the threshold of the temple-door, and there received the glory of the Lord.”
Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the gate of the house of the LORD that faces east.
“The gate - The gate of the templecourt. The gate was the place of judgment. Five and twenty men - Not the same men as in Eze 8:16. There they were representatives of the “priests,” here of the “princes.””
They are saying, ‘Is not the time near to build houses? The city is the cooking pot, and we are the meat.’
“It is not near - In contradiction to Eze 7:2. Let us build houses - “To build houses” implies a sense of security. Jeremiah bade the exiles “build houses” in a foreign land because they would not soon quit it Jer 29:5; Jer 35:7.”
Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: The slain you have laid within this city are the meat, and the city is the pot; but I will remove you…
“All that shall remain in the city are the buried dead. Bloodshed and murder were at this time rife in Jerusalem, and these were among the chief crimes that were bringing down judgment upon the city.”
You will fall by the sword, and I will judge you even to the borders of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
“In the border of Israel - Hamath was the northern border of Israel (margin reference). At Riblah in Hamath the king of Babylon judged and condemned Zedekiah and the princes of Judah Jer 52:9-10.”
Now as I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I fell facedown and cried out in a loud voice, “Oh, Lord GOD, will You bring the remnant of…
“The death of Pelatiah was communicated in this vision, which represented ideally the idolatry in which Pelatiah had actually been foremost.”
“Son of man, your brothers—your relatives, your fellow exiles, and the whole house of Israel—are those of whom the people of Jerusalem have said, ‘They are far away from the…
“Thy kindred - The original word is derived from a root, suggesting the ideas of “redeeming” and “avenging” as connected with the bond of “kindred.””
And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh,
“Compare Rev. 21. The identity of thought and language in Ezekiel, predicting the new kingdom of Israel, and in John, foretelling the kingdom of heaven, forces upon us the conclusion that the prophecy of Ezekiel has an ultimate reference to that climax which John plainly…”
And the glory of the LORD rose up from within the city and stood over the mountain east of the city.
“The mountain which is on the east side of the city - The Mount of Olives. The rabbis commenting on this passage said the Shechinah retired to this Mount, and there for three years called in vain to the people with human voice that they…”
Therefore, son of man, pack your bags for exile. In broad daylight, set out from your place and go to another as they watch.
“Stuff - Raiment, vessels, and the like. The “removing” was to be of the kind that accompanied exile. The whole account of this transaction marks it as a real act.”
Bring out your baggage for exile by day, as they watch. Then in the evening, as they watch, go out like those who go into exile.
“The particulars which Ezekiel here foretold actually occurred (compare 2Ki 25:4; Jer 39:4); but at this time Zedekiah seemed to be prosperous, and the Jews at Jerusalem expected, it is clear, a long continuance of his prosperity (see Eze 17:1 note).”
Tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘This burden concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel who are there.’
“Burden - A word used to indicate a prediction of woe to be borne by some individual or people (Isa 13:1 note). Ezekiel, bearing his “stuff” on his shoulder was a sign of the weight of calamity coming upon king and people.”
But I will spare a few of them from sword and famine and plague, so that in the nations to which they go, they can recount all their abominations.
“Few - literally, as in the margin; so few, that they can easily be counted Isa 10:19. The few who should escape destruction should make known to all among whom they should dwell how great had been the wickedness of the people, how just their…”
Then tell the people of the land that this is what the Lord GOD says about those living in Jerusalem and in the land of Israel: ‘They will eat their…
“The people of the land - Chaldaea. Of the inhabitants - In respect to “the inhabitants.” Desolate from, all that is therein - i. e., stripped of all its inhabitants and of all its wealth.”
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
“As in Ezek. 7, the nearness of the judgment is foretold. Eze 12:22 The land of Israel - is put generally for the land where the children of Israel dwelt, whether at home, or in exile.”