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
You claim to have a strategy and strength for war, but these are empty words. In whom are you now trusting, that you have rebelled against me?
“I say, sayest thou - In 2Ki 18:20, this is ‘thou sayest;’ and thus many manuscripts read it here, and Lowth and Noyes have adopted that reading. So the Syriac reads it. But the sense is not affected whichever reading is adopted.”
But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is He not the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and…
“But if thou say to me - If you shall make this plea, that you believe Yahweh will protect you in your revolt. The word ‘thou’ here refers to Hezekiah, or to the ambassadors speaking in his name.”
Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!
“Now, therefore, give pledges - Margin, ‘Hostages.’ The Hebrew verb (ערב ‛ârab) means properly to mix or mingle; then, to exchange commodities by barter or traffic; then, to become surety for anyone, to exchange with him, to stand in his place; then, to pledge, to…”
For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
“How then wilt thou turn away the face - The most unimportant captain in the army of Assyria commands more horsemen than this, and how can you expect to oppose even him, much more how can you be able to resist all the mighty army…”
Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it.
“Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language - Hebrew, ארמית 'ărâmı̂yt - ‘Aramean.’ Aram, or Aramea, properly meaning a high region, or the highlands, was of wider extent than Syria Proper, and comprehended not only Syria, but Mesopotamia.”
Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of…
“Make you trust in the Lord - Rabshakeh knew that Hezekiah was professedly devoted to Yahweh, and that he would endeavor to induce the people to trust in him.”
until I come and take you away to a land like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
“Until I come - These are the words of the king of Assyria delivered by Rabshakeh. It was proposed that they should remain safely in Jerusalem until Sennacherib should himself come and remove them to his own land.”
Do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’
“Hath any of the gods of the nations ... - This is said to show them the impossibility, as he supposed, of being delivered from the arm of the king of Assyria.”
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand?
“Where are the gods of Hamath ... - In regard to these places, see the notes at Isa 10:9-11. Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? - Sepharvaim was probably in Mesopotamia.”
Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and Asaph’s son Joah the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they relayed to him the words…
“With their clothes rent - This was a common mark of grief among the Jews (see 2Sa 3:21; 1Ki 21:27; Ezr 9:3; Job 1:20; Job 2:12; Jer 36:24; and the notes at Mat 26:65; notes at Act 14:14).”
On hearing this report, King Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and entered the house of the LORD.
“When king Hezekiah heard it - Heard the account of the words of Rabshakeh Isa 36:22. That he rent his clothes - (See the note at Isa 36:22). He covered himself with sackcloth - (See the note at Isa 3:24).”
And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz
“And he sent Eliakim - (See the note at Isa 36:3). And the elders of the priests - It was a case of deep importance, and one that pertained in a special manner to the interests of religion; and he, therefore, selected the most respectable…”
to tell him, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace; for children have come to the point of birth, but there is no…
“This is a day of rebuke - This may refer either to the reproaches of Rabsbakeh, or more probably to the fact that Hezekiah regarded the Lord as rebuking his people for their sins.”
Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to defy the living God, and He will rebuke…
“It may be the Lord thy God - The God whom thou dost serve, and in whose name and by whose authority thou dost exercise the prophetic office.”
Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, where I will cause him to fall by the…
“Behold, I will send a blast upon him - Margin, ‘Put a spirit into him.’ The word rendered ‘blast’ (רוח rûach) is commonly rendered ‘spirit.’ It may denote breath, air, soul, or spirit.”
Now Sennacherib had been warned about Tirhakah king of Cush: “He has set out to fight against you.” On hearing this, Sennacherib sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
“And he heard say - The report or rumour referred to in Isa 37:7. In what way he heard this is not intimated.”
“Give this message to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand…
“Let not thy God deceive thee - The similar message which had been sent by Rabshakeh Isa 36:14-15 had been sent mainly to the people to induce them not to put confidence in Hezekiah, as if he would deceive them by leading them to rely…”
Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my fathers rescue those nations—the gods of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph, and of the people of Eden in Telassar?
“My fathers - My predecessors on the throne. Gozan - This was a region or country in the northern part of Mesopotamia, and on the river Chaboras.”
Where are the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?’”
“The king of Hamath - (See the note at Isa 36:19). Hena and Ivah - Hena is mentioned in 2Ki 18:34; 2Ki 19:13. It was evidently in Mesopotamia, and was probably the same which was afterward called Ana, situated near a ford of the Euphrates.”
“O LORD of Hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.
“O Lord of hosts - (See the note at Isa 1:9). That dwellest between the cherubims - On the cherubim, see the note at Isa 14:13.”
They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods, but only wood and stone—the work of human hands.
“And have cast their gods into the fire - This appears to have been the usual policy of the Assyrians and Babylonians.”
Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you have prayed to Me concerning Sennacherib king of…
“Whereas thou hast prayed - Because thou hast come to me instead of relying on thy own resources and strength. In 2Ki 19:20, it is, ‘That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, I have heard.’”
this is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: ‘The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you.
“The virgin, the daughter of Zion - Jerusalem (see the note at Isa 1:8; compare the note at Isa 23:12). The parallelism in this and the following verses shows that the poetic form of speech is here introduced.”
Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!
“When hast thou reproached? - Not an idol. Not one who has no power to take vengeance, or to defend the city under his protection, but the living God. Exalted thy voice - That is, by thy messenger.”
I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.”
“I have digged - That is, I have digged wells. This was regarded among eastern nations as an important achievement.”