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.
.jpg?width=640)
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 have enlarged the nation and increased its joy. The people rejoice before You as they rejoice at harvest time, as men rejoice in dividing the plunder.
“Thou hast multiplied the nation - Thou hast rendered the nation strong, powerful, mighty. Several interpreters, as Calvin, Vitringa, and Le Clerc, suppose that the prophet here, and in the two following verses, speaks in the first instance of the prosperity near at hand, and…”
For as in the day of Midian You have shattered the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, and the rod of their oppressor.
“For thou hast broken - This verse, and the following, show the way in which the occasion of the joy had been furnished.”
For every trampling boot of battle and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.
“For every battle of the warrior - The expression used here has caused great difficulty, from the fact that it occurs nowhere else in the Scriptures.”
Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.
“Of the increase ... - The word rendered “government” here, משׂרה mis'râh, means properly his government as a prince - his principality, and is a continuation of the idea in the previous verse, ‘the Prince of Peace.’”
All the people will know it—Ephraim and the dwellers of Samaria. With pride and arrogance of heart they will say:
“And all the people shall know - Shall know the message; or shall know the judgment which God denounces against their crimes.”
The LORD has raised up the foes of Rezin against him and joined his enemies together.
“Therefore - This verse indicates the punishment that would come upon them for their pride. The Lord shall set up - Hebrew, ‘Shall exalt.’ That is, they shall overcome and subdue him. The adversaries of Rezin - King of Syria, Isa 7:1.”
But the people did not return to Him who struck them; they did not seek the LORD of Hosts.
“For the people ... - This is a reason why his anger would not cease, and it is, at the same time, the suggestion of a new crime for which the divine judgment would rest upon them. It commences the second part of the oracle.”
The head is the elder and honorable man, and the tail is the prophet who teaches lies.
“The ancient - The elder; the old man. And honorable - Hebrew, ‘The man of elevated countenance.’ The man of rank and office. The prophet that teacheth lies - The false prophet. Of those there were many; and probably at this time many in Samaria.”
For those who guide this people mislead them, and those they mislead are swallowed up.
“For the leaders of this people ... - Note, Isa 3:12. Hebrew ‘They that call this people blessed’ - referring more particularly to the false prophets. They that are led of them - Hebrew, ‘They that are called blessed by them.’”
Therefore the Lord takes no pleasure in their young men; He has no compassion on their fatherless and widows.
“Shall have no joy - He shall not delight in them so as to preserve them. The parallel part of the verse shows that the phrase is used in the sense of having mercy.”
By the wrath of the LORD of Hosts the land is scorched, and the people are fuel for the fire. No man even spares his brother.
“Through the wrath - By the anger, or indignation. This spreading desolation is the proof of his anger. Is the land darkened - The word used here - עתם ‛âtham - occurs nowhere else.”
Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh; together they turn against Judah. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.
“Manasseh, Ephraim - This verse is a continuation of the statement in regard to the extent and fearfulness of the faction. Those who were hitherto most tenderly and intimately allied to each other, would now be engaged in furious strife.”
Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees,
“Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees - To those who frame statutes that are oppressive and iniquitous. The prophet here refers, doubtless, to the rulers and judges of the land of Judea. A similar description he had before given; Isa 1:10, Isa 1:23, ...”
What will you do on the day of reckoning when devastation comes from afar? To whom will you flee for help? Where will you leave your wealth?
“And what will ye do - The prophet here proceeds to denounce the judgment, or punishment, that would follow the crimes specified in the previous verses. That punishment was the invasion of the land by a foreign force. ‘What will ye do?”
Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger; the staff in their hands is My wrath.
“O Assyrian - The word הוי hôy, is commonly used to denounce wrath, or to indicate approaching calamity; as an interjection of threatening; Isa 1:4. ‘Wo sinful nation;’ Isa 10:8, Isa 10:11, Isa 10:18, Isa 10:20-21; Jer 48:1; Eze 13:2.”
I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down…
“I will send him - Implying that he was entirely in the hand of God, and subject to his direction; and showing that God has control over kings and conqueror’s; Pro 21:1.”
“Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?
“Is not Calno as Carchemish? - The meaning of this confident boasting is, that none of the cities and nations against which be had directed his arms, had been able to resist him.”
As my hand seized the idolatrous kingdoms whose images surpassed those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
“The argument in these two verses is this: ‘The nations which I have subdued were professedly under the protection of idol gods. Yet those idols were not able to defend them - though stronger than the gods worshipped by Jerusalem and Samaria.”
Does an axe raise itself above the one who swings it? Does a saw boast over him who saws with it?
“Shall the axe ... - In this verse God reproves the pride and arrogance of the Assyrian monarch.”
And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles.
“And the light of Israel - That is, Yahweh. The word “light” here, אור 'ôr, is used also to denote a “fire,” or that which causes light and heat; see Eze 5:2; Isa 44:16; Isa 47:14.”
The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man.
“The glory of his forest - In these expressions, the army of Sennacherib is compared with a beautiful grove thick set with trees; and as all the beauty of a grove which the fire overruns is destroyed, so, says the prophet, it will be with…”
The remaining trees of its forests will be so few that a child could count them.
“And the rest of the trees ... - Keeping up still the image of a large and once dense forest, to which he had likened the Assyrian army. ‘The rest’ here means that which shall be left after the threatened judgment shall come upon them.”
On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no longer depend on him who struck them, but they will truly rely on…
“And it shall come to pass - The prophet proceeds to state the effect on the Jews, of the judgment that would overtake the army of the Assyrian.”
A remnant will return—a remnant of Jacob—to the Mighty God.
“The remnant ... - That is, those who shall be left after the invasion of Sennacherib. Shall return - Shall abandon their idolatrous rites and places of worship, and shall worship the true God.”
For the Lord GOD of Hosts will carry out the destruction decreed upon the whole land.
“For the Lord God of hosts - Note, Isa 1:9. Shall make a consumption - The Hebrew of this verse might be rendered, ‘for its destruction is completed, and is determined on; the Lord Yahweh of hosts will execute it in the midst of the…”