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 will not hunger or thirst, nor will scorching heat or sun beat down on them.
“They shall not hunger nor thirst - All their needs shall be abundantly provided for, as a shepherd will provide for his flock.”
I will turn all My mountains into roads, and My highways will be raised up.
“And I will make all my mountains a way - I will make all the mountains for a highway; or an even, level way. That is, he would remove all obstructions from their path.”
Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; break forth in song, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people, and He will have compassion on His afflicted ones.
“Sing, O heavens - In view of the glorious truths stated in the previous verses, that kings should rise up, and princes worship; that the Messiah would be for a light to the Gentiles, and that the true religion would be extended to each of…”
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!
“Can a woman forget her sucking child? - The design of this verse is apparent. It is to show that the love which God has for his people is stronger than that which is produced by the most tender ties created by any natural relation.”
Your builders hasten back; your destroyers and wreckers depart from you.
“Thy children - The children of Zion - the true people of God. But there is here considerable variety in the interpretation. The Hebrew of the present text is בניך bânâyı̂k (“thy sons”).”
For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.
“For thy waste and thy desolate places - Thy land over which ruin has been spread, and ever which the exile nation mourns. And the land of thy destruction - That is, thy land laid in ruins.”
Yet the children of your bereavement will say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; make room for us to live here.’
“The children which thou shalt have - The increase of the population shall be so great. After thou hast lost the other - Hebrew, ‘The sons of thy widowhood.’”
Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow to you facedown and lick the dust at your feet.
“And kings shall be thy nursing fathers - Margin, ‘Nourishers.’ That is, they would patronize the church of God; they would protect it by their laws, and foster it by their influence and become the personal advocates of the cause of Zion.”
Indeed, this is what the LORD says: “Even the captives of the mighty will be taken away, and the plunder of the tyrant will be retrieved; I will contend with…
“But thus saith the Lord - The meaning of this verse is, that however difficult or impracticable this might seem to be, yet it should be done.”
I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine.
“And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh - The language used here is that which appropriately describes the distresses resuiting from discord and internal strifes. Similar language occurs in Isa 9:20 (see the note on that verse).”
This is what the LORD says: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you?
“Thus saith the Lord - To the Jews in Babylon, who were suffering under his hand, and who might be disposed to complain that God had dealt with them with as much caprice and cruelty as a man did with his wife, when he gave…”
I clothe the heavens in black and make sackcloth their covering.”
“I clothe the heavens with blackness - With the dark clouds of a tempest - perhaps with an allusion to the remarkable clouds and tempests that encircled the brow of Sinai when he gave the law.”
The Lord GOD has opened My ears, and I have not been rebellious, nor have I turned back.
“The Lord God hath opened mine ear - This is another expression denoting that he was attentive to the import of the divine commission (see Psa 40:6). And I was not rebellious - I willingly undertook the task of communicating the divine will to mankind.”
Because the Lord GOD helps Me, I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set My face like flint, and I know that I will not be put to shame.
“For the Lord God will help me - That is, he will sustain me amidst all these expressions of contempt and scorn.”
Surely the Lord GOD helps Me. Who is there to condemn Me? See, they will all wear out like a garment; the moths will devour them.
“The Lord God will help me - (See Isa 50:7). In the Hebrew this is, ‘The Lord Jehovah,’ as it is in Isa 50:7 also, and these are among the places where our translators have improperly rendered the word יהוה yehovâh (Jehovah) by the word…”
Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who array yourselves with firebrands, walk in the light of your fire and of the firebrands you have lit!
“Behold, all ye that kindle a fire - This verse refers to the wicked. In the previous verse, the Messiah had called upon all the pious to put their trust in God, and it is there implied that they would do so.”
“Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn.
“Hearken unto me - That is, to the God of their fathers, who now addresses them. They are regarded as in exile and bondage, and as desponding in regard to their prospects.”
For the LORD will comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the…
“For the Lord shall comfort Zion - On the word ‘Zion,’ see the notes at Isa 1:8. The meaning here is, that he would again restore it from its ruins. The argument is drawn from the statement in the previous verses.”
My righteousness draws near, My salvation is on the way, and My arms will bring justice to the nations.
“My righteousness is near - The word ‘righteousness’ is used in a great variety of significations. Here it means, probably, the faithful completion of his promises to his people (Lowth).”
Listen to Me, you who know what is right, you people with My law in your hearts: Do not fear the scorn of men; do not be broken by their…
“Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness - My people who are acquainted with my law, and who are to be saved. This is addressed to the pious parlor the Jewish nation.”
For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, My salvation through all generations.”
“For the moth - (see Isa 50:9). The idea is, that they shall be consumed as the moth eats up a garment; or rather, that the moth itself shall consume them as it does a garment: that is, that they were so weak when compared…”
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD. Wake up as in days past, as in generations of old.
“Awake, awake - This verse commences a new subject (see the analysis of the chapter). It is the solemn and impassioned entreaty of those who were in exile that God would interpose in their behalf, as he did in behalf of his people when they…”
Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea for the redeemed to cross…
“Art thou not it - Art thou not still the same? The ground of the appeal is, that the same arm that dried up the sea, and made a path for the Jewish people, was still able to interpose and rescue them.”
So the redeemed of the LORD will return and enter Zion with singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.
“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord - This is probably the language of Yahweh assuring them, in answer to their prayer, that his ransomed people should again return to Zion.”
“I, even I, am He who comforts you. Why should you be afraid of mortal man, of a son of man who withers like grass?
“I even I am he that comforteth you - The word ‘I’ is repeated here to give emphasis to the passage, and to impress deeply upon them the fact that their consolation came alone from God.”