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
The poor man pleads for mercy, but the rich man answers harshly.
“Note the paradox. The poor man, of whom one might expect roughness, supplicates; the rich, well nurtured, from whom one might look for courtesy, answers harshly and brusquely.”
Better a poor man who walks with integrity than a fool whose lips are perverse.
“The “perverse” man is the rich fool, as contrasted with the poor man who is upright. Pro 19:1-2 are missing in the Septuagint.”
A man’s own folly subverts his way, yet his heart rages against the LORD.
“The non-wisdom which, having brought about disasters by its own perverseness, then turns round and “fretteth,” i. e., angrily complains against the Providence of God. Perverteth - Rather, “overturneth,” “maketh to fail.””
All the brothers of a poor man hate him—how much more do his friends avoid him! He may pursue them with pleading, but they are nowhere to be found.
“It seems best to follow the Vulgate in taking the last clause as a separate maxim, He who pursues words, nought are they; i. e., the fair speeches and promises of help come to nothing.”
He who acquires wisdom loves himself; one who safeguards understanding will find success.
“Wisdom - literally, as in the margin, to gain a “heart,” i. e., the higher faculties both of reason and feeling, is identical with gaining wisdom, i. e., the faculty which seeks and finds.”
A foolish son is his father’s ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.
“Calamity - The Hebrew word is plural (as in Psa 57:1; Psa 91:3), and seems to express the multiplied and manifold sorrow caused by the foolish son.”
Kindness to the poor is a loan to the LORD, and He will repay the lender.
“Note the original greatness of the thought. We give to the poor. Have we lost our gift? No, what we gave, we have lent to One who will repay with usury. Compare the yet nobler truth of our Lord’s teaching Mat 25:40.”
The desire of a man is loving devotion; better to be poor than a liar.
“The “liar” is probably the man, who makes false excuses for not giving, and so is inferior to the poor man, whose “desire,” the wish to do good, is taken, in the absence of means to carry it into effect, for the act of kindness…”
The fear of the LORD leads to life, that one may rest content, without visitation from harm.
“Shall abide satisfied - Better, one that is satisfied hath a sure abiding-place. The word “abide” has, most probably, here as elsewhere, its original sense of “passing the night.” Even in the hour of darkness he shall be free from fear.”
Strike a mocker, and the simple will beware; rebuke the discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.
“Words which embrace nearly the whole theory of punishment. If the man who offends is a “scorner,” hardened beyond all hope of reformation, then punish him by way of retribution and example, and let the penalty be sharp, that even the unwary and careless may…”
If you cease to hear instruction, my son, you will stray from the words of knowledge.
“literally, Cease, my son, to hear instruction, that thou mayest err from the words of knowledge; advice given ironically to do that to which his weakness leads him, with a clear knowledge of the evil to which he is drifting.”
A corrupt witness mocks justice, and a wicked mouth swallows iniquity.
“Ungodly witness - literally, “Witness of Belial,” “worthless,” “untruthful.” Devoureth iniquity - Seizes on it eagerly, as a dainty, lives on it.”
Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.
““Wine” and “strong drink” are personified as themselves doing what they make men do. The latter (see Lev 10:9 note) is here, probably, the “palm-wine” of Syria.”
Even a young man is known by his actions—whether his conduct is pure and upright.
“The graces or the faults of children are not trifles. “The child is father of the man;” and the earliest actions are prophecies of the future, whether it will be pure and right, or unclean and evil.”
Food gained by fraud is sweet to a man, but later his mouth is full of gravel.
““To eat gravel” was a Hebrew Lam 3:16, and is an Arabic, phrase for getting into trouble. So “bread,” got by deceit, tastes sweet at first, but ends by leaving the hunger of the soul unsatisfied.”
He who reveals secrets is a constant gossip; avoid the one who babbles with his lips.
“Flattereth - literally, “The man who opens his lips,” who has no reticence; such a man, with or without intending it, does the work of a talebearer.”
An inheritance gained quickly will not be blessed in the end.
“Or, An inheritance gotten hastily (greedily sought after by unjust means) at the beginning, the end thereof shall not be blessed. Another reading gives, “an inheritance loathed, (compare Zec 11:8), or with a curse upon it.” The King James Version agrees with the versions.”
It is a trap for a man to dedicate something rashly, only later to reconsider his vows.
“Better, It is a snare to a man to utter a vow (of consecration) rashly, and after vows to inquire whether he can fulfill them. Both clauses are a protest against the besetting sin of rash and hasty vows. Compare the marginal reference.”
The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching out his inmost being.
“The spirit of man - The “breath” of Gen 2:7, the higher life, above that which he has in common with lower animals, coming to him direct from God.”
The king’s heart is a waterway in the hand of the LORD; He directs it where He pleases.
“Rivers of water - See the Psa 1:3 note. As the cultivator directs the stream into the channels where it is most wanted, so Yahweh directs the thoughts of the true king, that his favors may fall, not at random, but in harmony with a…”
To do righteousness and justice is more desirable to the LORD than sacrifice.
“Compare the marginal reference. The words have a special significance as coming from the king who had built the temple, and had offered sacrifices that could not be numbered for multitude” 1Ki 8:5.”
Better to live on a corner of the roof than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife.
“A wide house - literally, “a house of companionship,” i. e., a house shared with her. The flat roof of an Eastern house was often used for retirement by day, or in summer for sleep by night.”
He who loves pleasure will become poor; the one who loves wine and oil will never be rich.
“Wine and oil - i. e., The costly adjuncts of a princely banquet. The price of oil or precious unguent was about equal to the 300 days’ wages of a field laborer Mat 20:2.”
Precious treasures and oil are in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man consumes them.
“Spendeth it up - literally, swalloweth it. The wise man keeps a store in reserve. He gains uprightly, spends moderately, never exhausts himself. But the proverb may have also a higher application.”
He who pursues righteousness and loving devotion finds life, righteousness, and honor.
“The man who keeps “righteousness” will assuredly find it, but he will find besides it the “life” and the “honor” which he was not seeking. Compare 1Ki 3:13; Mat 6:33.”