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
But you who forsake the LORD, who forget My holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
“But ye are they that forsake the Lord - Or rather, ‘Ye who forsake Yahweh, and who forget my holy mountain, I will number to the sword.’”
Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; My servants will drink, but you will go thirsty; My servants will rejoice…
“Therefore, thus saith the Lord God - The design of this verse is to show what would be the difference between those who kept and those who forsook his commandments.”
My servants will shout for joy with a glad heart, but you will cry out with a heavy heart and wail with a broken spirit.
“Shall sing for joy of heart - They who serve me shall have abundant occasion of rejoicing. But ye - shall howl. You shall shriek under the anguish and distress that shall come upon you. For vexation of spirit - Margin, as in Hebrew, ‘Breaking.’”
You will leave behind your name as a curse for My chosen ones, and the Lord GOD will slay you; but to His servants He will give another name.
“And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen - To my people; to those whom I have selected to be my friends.”
For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
“For behold - The idea in this verse is, that there should be a state of glory as great as if a new heaven and a new earth were to be made.”
I will rejoice in Jerusalem and take delight in My people. The sounds of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.
“And I will rejoice in Jerusalem - (See the notes at Isa 62:5). And the voice of weeping shall no more be heard - (See the notes at Isa 25:7-8).”
No longer will a nursing infant live but a few days, or an old man fail to live out his years.
“There shall be no more thence - The Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate, read this, ‘There shall not be there.’ The change requires the omission of a single letter in the present Hebrew text, and the sense seems to demand it.”
The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but the food of the serpent will be dust.
“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together - (See the notes at Isa. 11.) And the lion shall eat straw - Shall eat hay or provender like the ox. The food of the lion now is flesh.”
This is what the LORD says: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me?
“The heaven is my throne - (See the notes at Isa 57:15). Here he is represented as having his seat or throne there. He speaks as a king.”
So I will choose their punishment and I will bring terror upon them, because I called and no one answered, I spoke and no one listened.
“I also will choose their delusions - Margin, ‘Devices.’ The Hebrew word rendered here ‘delusions’ and ‘devices’ (תעלוּלים ta‛ălûlı̂ym) properly denotes petulance, sauciness; and then vexation, adverse destiny, from עלל ‛âlal, to do, to accomplish, to do evil, to maltreat.”
You who tremble at His word, hear the word of the LORD: “Your brothers who hate you and exclude you because of My name have said, ‘Let the LORD be…
“Hear the word of the Lord - This is an address to the pious and persecuted portion of the nation. It is designed for their consolation, and contains the assurance that Yahweh would appear in their behalf, and that they should be under his protecting…”
“Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before she was in pain, she delivered a boy.
“Before she travailed, she brought forth - That is, Zion. The idea here is, that there would be a great and sudden increase of her numbers.”
Shall I bring a baby to the point of birth and not deliver it?” says the LORD. “Or will I who deliver close the womb?” says your God.
“Shall I bring to the birth? - The sense of this verse is plain. It is, that God would certainly accomplish what he had here predicted, and for which he had made ample arrangements and preparations.”
so that you may nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you may drink deeply and delight yourselves in her glorious abundance.
“That ye may suck - The same figure occurs in Isa 60:16; and substantidally in Isa 49:23. See the note at those places. That ye may milk out - The image is an obvious one.”
For behold, the LORD will come with fire—His chariots are like a whirlwind—to execute His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire.
“For behold, the Lord will come with fire - The Septuagint reads this ‘As fire’ (ὡς πύρ hōs pur).”
For by fire and by His sword, the LORD will execute judgment on all flesh, and many will be slain by the LORD.
“For by fire and by his sword - The sword is an instrument by which punishment is executed (see the notes at Isa 34:5; compare Rom 13:4).”
“Those who consecrate and purify themselves to enter the groves—to follow one in the center of those who eat the flesh of swine and vermin and rats—will perish together,” declares…
“They that sanctify themselves - That is, who attempt to purify themselves by idolatrous rites, by ablutions, and lustrations. The design here is, to describe those who will be exposed to the wrath of God when he shall come to execute vengeance.”
I will establish a sign among them, and I will send survivors from among them to the nations—to Tarshish, Put, and the archers of Lud; to Tubal, Javan, and the…
“And I will set a sign among them - (See the notes at Isa 11:12; Isa 18:3). On the meaning of the word ‘sign’ (אות 'ôth), see the notes at Isa 7:11. What is its meaning here is to be determined by the connection.”
“And I will select some of them as priests and Levites,” says the LORD.
“And I will also take of them for priests - I will give to them an honorable place in my public service; that is, I will make them ministers of religion as if they were priests and Levites.”
“For just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, will endure before Me,” declares the LORD, “so your descendants and your name will endure.
“For as the new heavens and the new earth - (See the notes at Isa 65:17). Shall remain before me - They shall not pass away and be succeeded by others.”
From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come to worship before Me,” says the LORD.
“And it shall come to pass - As the prophet closes the book and winds up his whole prophecy, he directs the attention to that future period which had occupied so much of his attention in vision, when the whole world should be acquainted with…”