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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.
Albert Barnes. Painted by George Edward Perine. The file is marked public domain. This site's record does not give the artist's death year, which is what settles the painting's own rights. The file record

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

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

Philemon 1:1Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker,

Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ - A prisoner at Rome in the cause of Jesus Christ; Eph 3:1 note; 2Ti 1:8 note. And Timothy our brother - Timothy, it seems, had come to him agreeably to his request; 2Ti 4:9.

Philemon 1:5Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

Hearing of thy love and faith - Either by Onesimus, who, after his conversion, would be disposed to state all that he knew that was favorable of Philemon, or hearing it by some other persons who had come from Colosse to Rome.

Philemon 1:7Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

I take great joy and encouragement in your love, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.

For we have great joy and consolation in thy love - In thy love toward Christians. The word here rendered “joy” (χάριν charin), properly means grace. A large number of manuscripts, however, instead of this word, have χαρὰν charan, Charan, joy. See Wetstein.

Philemon 1:9Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

I prefer to appeal on the basis of love. For I, Paul, am now aged, and a prisoner of Christ Jesus as well.

Yet for love’s sake - For the love which you bear me, and for the common cause. I rather beseech thee - Rather than command thee. Being such an one as Paul the aged - πρεσβυτης presbutēs - an old man.

Philemon 1:11Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.

Which in time past was to thee unprofitable - Either because he was indolent; because he had wronged him (compare the notes at Phm 1:18), or because he had run away from him.

Philemon 1:13Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

I would have liked to keep him with me, so that on your behalf he could minister to me in my chains for the gospel.

Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead - “That he might render me the service which I know you would if you were here.”

Philemon 1:15Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for good—

For perhaps he therefore departed for a season - Perhaps on this account, or for this reason - διὰ τοῦτο dia touto - he left you for a little time. Greek, “for an hour” - πρὸς ὥραν pros hōran.

Philemon 1:17Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

So if you consider me a partner, receive him as you would receive me.

If there count me therefore a partner - The word rendered “partner” (κοινωνὸς koinōnos, means “a partaker, a companion.”

Philemon 1:19Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it—not to mention that you owe me your very self.

I Paul have written it with mine own hand - It has been inferred from this, that Paul wrote this entire Epistle with his own hand, though this was contrary to his usual practice; compare the Rom 16:22 note; 1Co 16:21 note; Gal 6:11 note.

Philemon 1:21Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.

Having confidence in thy obedience - That you would comply with all my expressed desires. I wrote unto thee - “I have written to you;” to wit, in this Epistle.

Philemon 1:23Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings,

There salute thee Epaphras - The same persons who are here mentioned as greeting Philemon, are mentioned in the close of the Epistle to the Colossians - furnishing a high degree of evidence that Philemon resided at Colosse.

Philemon 1:25Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ... - Notes, 2Ti 4:22. The subscription to the Epistle is of no authority, but in this case is undoubtedly correct. Compare the remarks at the close of 1 Corinthians, and Titus.