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
For then it would outweigh the sand of the seas—no wonder my words have been rash.
“Heavier than the sand of the sea - That is, they would be found to be insupportable. Who could bear up the sands of the sea? So Job says of his sorrows. A comparison somewhat similar is found in Pro 27:3.”
that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
“Even that it would please God to destroy me - To put me to death, and to release me from my sorrows; compare Job 3:20-21.”
Is there any help within me now that success is driven from me?
“Is not my help in me? - This would be better rendered in an affirmative manner, or as an exclamation. The interrogative form of the previous verses need not be continued in this. The sense is, “alas! there is no help in me!””
but ceasing in the dry season and vanishing from their channels in the heat.
“What time - In the time; or after a time. They wax warm - Gesenius renders this word (יזרבו yezorebû) when they became narrow, and this version has been adopted by Noyes. The word occurs nowhere else.”
The caravans of Tema look for water; the travelers of Sheba hope to find it.
“The troops of Tema looked - That is, looked for the streams of water. On the situation of Tema, see Notes, Job 2:11. This was the country of Eliphaz, and the image would be well understood by him. The figure is one of exquisite beauty.”
They are confounded because they had hoped; their arrival brings disappointment.
“They were confounded because they had hoped - The caravans of Tema and Sheba. The word “confounded” here means ashamed. It represents the state of feeling which one has who has met with disappointment.”
deliver me from the hand of the enemy; redeem me from the grasp of the ruthless’?
“Or, Deliver me out of the enemy’s hand? - At no time have I called on you to rescue me from a foe. Or, Redeem me? - That is, rescue me from the hand of robbers.”
How painful are honest words! But what does your argument prove?
“How forcible are right words! - How weighty and impressive are words of truth! Job means that he was accustomed to feel their power, and to admit it on his soul.”
“Is not man consigned to labor on earth? Are not his days like those of a hired hand?
“Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? - Margin, or, warfare. The word used here צבא tsâbâ' means properly a host, an army, see the notes, Isa 1:9; then it means warfare, or the hard service of a soldier; notes, Isa 40:2.”
So I am allotted months of futility, and nights of misery are appointed me.
“So am I made to possess - Hebrew I am made to inherit. The meaning is, that such sad and melancholy seasons now were his only portion. Months of vanity - That is, months which were destitute of comfort; in other words, months of affliction.”
My flesh is clothed with worms and encrusted with dirt; my skin is cracked and festering.
“My flesh is clothed with worms - Job here undoubtedly refers to his diseased state, and this is one of the passages by which we may learn the nature of his complaint; compare the notes at Job 2:7.”
As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come back up.
“As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away - This image is taken from the light and fleecy clouds, which become smaller and smaller until they wholly vanish. For an illustration of a similar phrase, see the notes at Isa 44:22.”
When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint,
“When I say, My bed shall comfort me - The idea in this verse and the following is, that there was no intermission to his sorrows. Even the times when people usually sought repose were to him times of distress.”
so that I would prefer strangling and death over my life in this body.
“So that my soul - So that I; the soul being put for himself. Chooseth strangling - Dr. Good renders it “suffocation,” and supposes that Job alludes to the oppression of breathing, produced by what is commonly called the night-mare, and that he means that…”
Will You never look away from me, or leave me alone to swallow my spittle?
“How long wilt thou not depart? - How long is this to continue? The same word occurs in Job 14:6. The word rendered “depart” שׁעה shâ‛âh means to look, to look around, and then to look away from anyone or anything.”
Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?
“Doth God pervert judgment? - That is, Does God afflict people unjustly? Does he show favor to the evil, and punish the good? Bildad here undoubtedly refers to Job, and supposes that he had brought this charge against God.”
But if you would earnestly seek God and ask the Almighty for mercy,
“If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes - If thou wouldest do it now. If even on the supposition that your sons have thus perished, and that God has come out in judgment against your family, you would look to God, you might be restored…”
Though your beginnings were modest, your latter days will flourish.
“Though thy beginning was small - On the supposition that the children of Job had been cut off, his family now was small.”
For we were born yesterday and know nothing; our days on earth are but a shadow.
“For we are but of yesterday - That is, we are of short life. We have had but few opportunities of observation compared with those who have gone before us.”
Does papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Do reeds flourish without water?
“Can the rush - This passage has all the appearance of being a fragment of a poem handed down from ancient times.”
Such is the destiny of all who forget God; so the hope of the godless will perish.
“So are the paths of all that forget God - This is clearly a part of the quotation from the sayings of the ancients. The word “paths” here means ways, acts, doings. They who forget God are like the paper-reed.”
His roots wrap around the rock heap; he looks for a home among the stones.
“His roots are wrapped about the heap - There has been great diversity of opinion in the interpretation of this passage. Jerome renders it, “over the heap of stones his roots are condensed.” Walton, “super fontem - over a fountain.””
Surely this is the joy of his way; yet others will spring from the dust.
“Behold, this is the joy of his way - This is evidently sarcastic. “Lo! such is the joy of his course! He boasts of joy, as all hypocrites do, but his joy endures only for a little time. This is the end of it.”
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with a shout of joy.
“Till he fill thy mouth with laughing - Until he make thee completely happy. The word rendered “till” (עד ‛ad), is rendered by Dr. Good, “even yet.””
Your enemies will be clothed in shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”
“They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame - When they see your returning prosperity, and the evidences of the divine favor. They will then be ashamed that they regarded you as a hypocrite, and that they reproached you in your trials.”