Voices and influences
John Gill
The self-taught Baptist Hebraist who pastored one London congregation for fifty-one years and wrote a comment on every verse in the Bible.
Summary
This site quotes John Gill 5,991 times across 66 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived 1697 to 1771.
- Quoted here most in Psalms: 639 of 5,991.
John Gill
- Lived
- 1697 to 1771
- Tradition
- Reformed Baptist
5 of 5,991 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because John Gill died in 1771 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.
A bruised reed shall he not break,.... Various are the thoughts of interpreters, about what is meant by this, and by the smoking flax shall he not quench.
Undated in the archive this site cites.
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Some think the Scribes and Pharisees are designed, whose power Christ could easily crush, and their wrath and fury restrain, but would not, till the time of his vengeance was come. Others that the publicans and sinners are intended, of whose conversion and salvation there were more hope than of the Scribes and Pharisees; and which Christ greatly sought after, and therefore cherished and encouraged them in his ministry and conversation.
Matthew 12:20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish, till He leads justice to victory. BSB
And Cain talked with Abel,.... Or "said", or "spoke unto" him (l); either what the Lord God said to him in the foregoing verses, as Aben Ezra; or he spoke to him in a kind and friendly manner, and thereby got him to take a…
Undated in the archive this site cites.
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walk in the field with him.
Genesis 4:8 Then Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. BSB
And whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offering unto the Lord,.... This, as Ben Gersom observes, is distinguished from a burnt offering; for though it was to be perfect, and without blemish, yet not obliged to be a male as that, Lev 3:
Undated in the archive this site cites.
Leviticus 22:21 When a man presents a peace offering to the LORD from the herd or flock to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering, it must be without blemish or defect to be acceptable. BSB
So David and Abishai came to the people by night,.... Josephus (l) wrongly says, that he took with him both Abishai and Ahimelech; he chose to have but one, for the greater secrecy.
Undated in the archive this site cites.
1 Samuel 26:7 That night David and Abishai came to the troops, and Saul was lying there asleep in the inner circle of the camp, with his spear stuck in the ground by his head. And Abner and the troops were lying around him. BSB
Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam,.... Calamities, destruction, and ruin: and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall; not leave a dog of his, or rather a male, see 1Sa 25:22.
Undated in the archive this site cites.
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and him that is shut up and left in Israel; in garrisons or in prisons, in cities or in fields, or in whatsoever situation or circumstances they may be.
1 Kings 14:10 Because of all this, behold, I am bringing disaster on the house of Jeroboam: I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both slave and free, in Israel; I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns up dung until it is gone! BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes John Gill 5,991 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
John Gill was born at Kettering in Northamptonshire on November 23, 1697, the son of a wool merchant who served as a deacon in the dissenting congregation there. Because the family were Nonconformists, the local grammar school effectively closed to him around the age of eleven. So he taught himself. What he taught himself was languages. He worked through Latin and Greek on his own, then Hebrew — and then kept going, into the Targums, the Talmud, and the medieval rabbis. Almost no English Christian of his century read Jewish sources as widely as Gill did, and he read them in the original. He was baptized in 1716, began preaching, and in 1719 was called to a small Particular Baptist congregation at Horsleydown in Southwark, south London. He stayed fifty-one years, until his death. That pulpit had a long life ahead of it: the congregation later moved and eventually became the church that called Charles Spurgeon a century afterward, and Spurgeon spoke of Gill as one of his predecessors. The work he is remembered for is the commentary. Gill wrote an exposition of the entire Bible, verse by verse, book by book — the New Testament first, in three volumes (1746–1748), then the Old Testament in six (1748–1763). It was the first complete verse-by-verse commentary on the whole Bible written by a Baptist, and it is thick with rabbinic material nobody else was bringing to English readers. He also wrote The Cause of God and Truth (1735–1738), a four-part defense of Calvinist doctrine against the Arminian arguments of Daniel Whitby, and late in life A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (1767–1770), the first full systematic theology produced by an English Baptist. The University of Aberdeen gave him a doctorate in divinity in 1748; he remarked that he had neither asked for it nor deserved it. His theology was high Calvinism, and he pressed it further than most. Gill held to eternal justification and was reluctant to make a free offer of Christ to all who heard him — a position later called hyper-Calvinism, and one that Andrew Fuller and then Spurgeon worked hard to undo among the Baptists. Historians still argue about exactly how far he went. Robert Hall's jab has followed the commentary ever since: it was, he said, a continent of mud. But the mud kept getting reprinted. Augustus Toplady defended him fiercely. Spurgeon kept him on the shelf and praised his learning in Commenting and Commentaries, while rejecting outright his restraint about inviting sinners to come. He preached his last sermon in 1771 and died at Camberwell on October 14 of that year, aged seventy-three. Fifty-one years in one pulpit, a comment on every verse in the Bible, and a body of theology his own denomination has been arguing with ever since. Sources: John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments and A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity; John Rippon, A Brief Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late Rev. John Gill, D.D.; C. H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries; Timothy George and David Dockery, eds., Baptist Theologians.
5,991 quotations across 66 books
Where this voice is quoted
For I was like a gentle lamb led to slaughter; I did not know that they had plotted against me: “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit; let us…
“But I was like a lamb, or an ox,.... The word "alluph", rendered an ox, is by many considered as an adjective to the word lamb (n); since the disjunctive particle or is not in the next; and is differently translated; by the Vulgate Latin…”
Righteous are You, O LORD, when I plead before You. Yet about Your judgments I wish to contend with You: Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
“Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee,.... The six first verses of this chapter properly belong to the preceding, being of the same argument, and in strict connection with the latter part of it.”
But You know me, O LORD; You see me and test my heart toward You.
“But thou, O Lord, knowest me,.... The Lord knew him before he was born, Jer 1:5, he knew what he designed him for, and what use he would make of him; and he knew him now, and loved him, and cared for him, as his…”
My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the forest. She has roared against Me; therefore I hate her.
“Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest,.... Which roars, and terrifies passengers from going that way; and which rends and tears in pieces all it meets with.”
Is not My inheritance to Me like a speckled bird of prey with other birds of prey circling against her?
“Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird,.... Or, "is not mine heritage unto me as a speckled bird?"”
Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.
“Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard,.... This is a metaphor which is often used of the people of Israel and Judah; see Psa 80:8, the pastors that destroyed them are not their own governors, civil or religious, but Heathen princes, Nebuchadnezzar and his generals.”
Over all the barren heights in the wilderness the destroyers have come, for the sword of the LORD devours from one end of the earth to the other.
“The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness,.... Of Judea; or which lay between Chaldea and Judea, through which the Chaldean army came; called here the "spoilers", because they spoiled and plundered all places where they came; nor could the high, strong…”
This is what the LORD says: “As for all My evil neighbors who attack the inheritance that I bequeathed to My people Israel, I am about to uproot them from…
“Thus saith the Lord against all mine evil neighbours,.... Or, "concerning" (h) them; the Egyptians, Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Tyre, and Sidon; whom the Lord calls his "neighbours", because they were near the land of Canaan, where his people dwelt, to whom he vouchsafed his…”
But if they will not obey, then I will uproot that nation; I will uproot it and destroy it, declares the LORD.”
“But if they will not obey,.... Or "hear" (k); the word of the Lord, and hearken to the ministers of the Gospel, and be subject to the ordinances of it; or as the Targum, "will not receive instruction:'' I will utterly pluck up and destroy…”
Then the word of the LORD came to me a second time:
“And the word of the Lord,.... The Targum is, "the word of prophecy from before the Lord:'' came unto me the second time, saying; what distance of time there was between this order and the former is not known.”
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
“Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying. Or the word of prophecy from before the Lord, as the Targum; and now follows the application of this sign to the thing signified, and the whole intention of it is opened.”
Lift up your eyes and see those coming from the north. Where is the flock entrusted to you, the sheep that were your pride?
“Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north,.... There are a Keri and a Cetib of the words "lift up" and "behold"; they are written in the singular number, and may be considered as directed to the king, as the words…”
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither are you able to do good—you who are accustomed to doing evil.
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?.... Or, "the Cushite"; either, as the Arabic version, the "Abyssine", the inhabitant of the eastern Ethiopia; properly an Ethiopian, as the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it; or, the "Chusean Arabian"; the inhabitant of Arabia Chusea, which was…”
Your adulteries and lustful neighings, your shameless prostitution on the hills and in the fields—I have seen your detestable acts. Woe to you, O Jerusalem!
“I have seen thine adulteries,.... Not literally such, though they were greatly guilty of that sin; but figuratively, their idolatries: thy neighings; expressive of their strong desires after other gods, like that of adulterers and adulteresses after one another; and both which are like the…”
This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought:
“The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the dearth. Or, "concerning the words of straints" (x); that is, concerning the businesses of a drought, as the Targum; concerning the Lord's restraining rain from the earth, and forbidding the heavens dropping it down…”
The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; their jars return empty. They are ashamed and humiliated; they cover their heads.
“And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters,.... To places where water used to be; to the pools, the upper and the lower, particularly to the fountain of Shiloah, which, Jerom says, was the only one the city of Jerusalem used.”
The ground is cracked because no rain has fallen on the land. The farmers are ashamed; they cover their heads.
“Because the ground is chapt,.... Through the violent heat of the sun, and want of rain; or, is broken (y); and crumbles into dust.”
Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there is no grass.
“Yea, the hind also calved in the field,.... Or brought forth her young in the field; of which see Job 39:1, and which they sometimes did through fear, particularly when frightened with thunder and lightning; and which are common in a time of heat and…”
If I go out to the country, I see those slain by the sword; if I enter the city, I see those ravaged by famine!
“If I go forth into the field,.... Without the city, where was the camp of the enemy besieging it then behold the slain with the sword!”
Have You rejected Judah completely? Do You despise Zion? Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing?
“Hast thou utterly rejected Judah?.... The prophet, though forbid, proceeds to prayers and expostulations on account of this people, the people of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin: or, "in rejecting hast thou rejected Judah?"”
Can the worthless idols of the nations bring rain? Do the skies alone send showers? Is this not by You, O LORD our God?
“Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain?.... The blessing wanted; none of the idols of the Gentiles, called vanities, because it was a vain thing to apply to them, or hope for anything from them, none of these could…”
Then the LORD said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel should stand before Me, My heart would not go out to this people.
“Then said the Lord unto me,.... In answer to his expostulations and entreaties, Jer 14:19, though Moses and Samuel stood before me; to pray before me, as the Targum; to make intercession for the people. Standing is a prayer gesture.”
I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and beasts of…
“And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord,.... Or four families (x), and these very devouring ones; that is, four sorts of punishment; and so the Targum, "four evil punishments;'' which are after mentioned.”
I will make their widows more numerous than the sand of the sea. I will bring a destroyer at noon against the mothers of young men.
“Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas,.... Their husbands being slain; not in the times of Ahaz, when a hundred and twenty thousand men were slain in one day in Judah, by Pekah the son of Remaliah, 2Ch 28:6, as…”
Then I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for My anger will kindle a fire that will burn against you.”
“And I will make thee to pass with thine enemies,.... Not Jeremiah, but the Jews, to whom these words are continued.”