Voices and influences
Matthew Henry
The Chester nonconformist who rose before dawn for ten years to write a whole-Bible commentary plain enough for a farming family to read at the table.
Summary
This site quotes Matthew Henry 7,276 times across 66 books, and lists 2 works.
- Lived 1662 to 1714, Welsh.
- Quoted here most in Psalms: 748 of 7,276.
Matthew Henry
- Lived
- 1662 to 1714
- Nation
- Welsh
- Tradition
- Puritan
- Body
- Presbyterian
5 of 7,276 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Matthew Henry died in 1714 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.
When things are at the worst they will begin to mend; and he will give them to see the glorious perfection of their deliverance; for, as for God, his work is perfect.
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
The rest of the quotation
He that in the beginning finished the heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of both, will finish all the blessings of both to his people. When he begins in ways of mercy he will make an end.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope. BSB
(2.) We must love mercy; we must delight in it, as our God does, must be glad of an opportunity to do good, and do it cheerfully.
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
The rest of the quotation
Justice is put before mercy, for we must not give that in alms which is wrongfully got, or with which our debts should be paid.
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
Though all are sinners, yet some are greater sinners than others. The men of Sodom were sinners of the first magnitude, sinners before the Lord, that is, impudent daring sinners; they were so to a proverb.
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
Genesis 13:13 But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD. BSB
Note, Some sins, and the sins of some sinners, cry aloud to heaven for vengeance. The iniquity of Sodom was crying iniquity, that is, it was so very provoking that it even urged God to punish.
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
Genesis 18:20 Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great. Because their sin is so grievous, BSB
It is justice, as well as wisdom, to do thus, in perptuam rei memoriam--that the circumstance may be perpetually remembered.
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
Genesis 21:30 He replied, “You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well.” BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Matthew Henry 7,276 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
Matthew Henry was born on October 18, 1662, at Broad Oak in Flintshire, on the Welsh border — a few months after the Act of Uniformity threw his father out of the Church of England. Philip Henry was one of roughly two thousand ministers ejected in 1662 for refusing to conform. He lost his living, kept preaching where he could, and taught his children at home. Matthew was a sickly boy who is said to have been reading Bible chapters aloud with comment at three years old. He grew up in a house where family worship happened twice a day and where nonconformity had a price attached to it. He studied under Thomas Doolittle at an academy for dissenters, then went to London in 1685 to read law at Gray's Inn — a sensible career for a man whose religion barred him from the universities. He gave it up. In 1687, at twenty-four, he was privately ordained and went to Chester as minister of a Presbyterian congregation. He stayed twenty-five years. He preached twice on Sunday, catechized the children, lectured on weeknights, visited constantly, and preached in the surrounding villages and in the county jail. The congregation grew to some hundreds of communicants and built a chapel in Crook Street. He began the commentary in November 1704. His method was ordinary and brutal: rise at four or five in the morning and write before the day's work, then take up the evening after it. He wrote for the family table — for a farmer reading aloud to his household, not for a scholar. The result is not technical. It is the text explained clause by clause and then pressed home, with a gift for the memorable line that has kept it quoted for three hundred years. In 1712 he moved, reluctantly, to a congregation at Mare Street, Hackney, in London. On June 22, 1714, riding back toward Hackney after preaching in Chester, he was thrown from his horse near Nantwich. He died that night at Tarporley, aged fifty-one. He had finished through the end of Acts. Thirteen fellow ministers completed Romans through Revelation from his notes and papers, and the whole Exposition of the Old and New Testaments was published in six volumes. It has never gone out of print. Its readers make the case for it better than any summary can. George Whitefield read it through four times, the last time on his knees. Spurgeon told his students in Commenting and Commentaries that every minister ought to read it entirely and carefully through at least once. John Wesley abridged it for his people. It sits on more shelves, in more languages, than any other commentary written in English. Sources: Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments; J. B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry; C. H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries; Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, ed. Matthew Henry Lee.
2 works
How to read this voice
An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments
1710
Not quoted on this site yet
Directions for Daily Communion with God
1712
Not quoted on this site yet
Their whole shelf sits at Matthew Henry Commentary (CCEL) and Blue Letter Bible - Matthew Henry.
7,276 quotations across 66 books
Where this voice is quoted
In her bitter distress, Hannah prayed to the LORD and wept with many tears.
“Our blessed Saviour himself, being in an agony, prayed more earnestly, Luke xxii. (2.) She mingled tears with her prayers. It was not a dry prayer: she wept sore.”
and said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put away your wine!”
“Hannah's humble vindication of herself from this crime with which she was charged. She bore it admirably well.”
Then Elkanah and all his house went up to make the annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow,
“Note, Those who are stedfastly resolved to pay their vows may yet see good cause to defer the payment of them. Every thing is beautiful in its season. No animal was accepted in sacrifice till it had been for some time under the dam, Lev.”
“Do what you think is best,” her husband Elkanah replied, “and stay here until you have weaned him. Only may the LORD confirm His word.”
“The solemn entering of this child into the service of the sanctuary. We may take it for granted that he was presented to the Lord at forty days old, as all the first-born were ( Luke ii.”
“Do what you think is best,” her husband Elkanah replied, “and stay here until you have weaned him. Only may the LORD confirm His word.”
“Others think it was not till he was weaned from childish things, at eight or ten years old. But I see no inconvenience in admitting such an extraordinary child as this into the tabernacle at three years old, to be educated among the children of…”
At that time Hannah prayed: “My heart rejoices in the LORD in whom my horn is exalted. My mouth speaks boldly against my enemies, for I rejoice in Your salvation.
“The mercy she had received was an answer to prayer, and therefore she thought herself especially obliged to give thanks for it. What we win by prayer we may wear with comfort, and must wear with praise.”
The LORD sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts.
“This is the instance that comes close to the occasion of the thanksgiving: The barren hath borne seven, meaning herself, for, though at present she had but one son, yet that one being a Nazarite, devoted to God and employed in his immediate service, he…”
Even before the fat was burned, the servant of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, “Give the priest some meat to roast, because he…
“He was a fat heavy man ( ch. iv. 18 ), and therefore it is charged upon the whole family (though Hophni and Phinehas were principally guilty), You make yourselves fat with the chief of all the offerings.”
Thus the sin of these young men was severe in the sight of the LORD, for they were treating the LORD’s offering with contempt.
“Secondly, That religion suffered by it: Men abhorred the offerings of the Lord. All good men abhorred their management of the offerings, and too many insensibly fell into a contempt of the offerings themselves for their sakes.”
And Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, “May the LORD give you children by this woman in place of the one she dedicated to the LORD.”
“As when Abraham had offered Isaac he received the promise of a numerous issue ( Gen. xxii. 16, 17 ), so did Hannah, when she had presented Samuel unto the Lord a living sacrifice.”
So the LORD attended to Hannah, and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the LORD.
“Peninnah is now mortified and crest-fallen. The tradition of the Jews is that when Hannah bore one child Peninnah buried two. There are many instances both of the increase of families that were inconsiderable and the extinguishing of families that made a figure, Job xxii.”
Then a man of God came to Eli and told him, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Did I not clearly reveal Myself to your father’s house when they were…
“The message is sent to Eli himself, because God would bring him to repentance and save him; not to his sons, whom he had determined to destroy.”
And out of all the tribes of Israel I selected your father to be My priest, to offer sacrifices on My altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod…
“He advanced him to the priesthood, entailed it upon his family, and thereby dignified it above any of the families of Israel.”
Why then do you kick at My sacrifice and offering that I have prescribed for My dwelling place?
“They had all shared in the gains of the sacrilege. It is to be feared that Eli himself, though he disliked and reproved the abuses they committed, yet did not forbear to eat of the roast meat they sacrilegiously got,”
And the boy Samuel ministered to the LORD before Eli. Now in those days the word of the LORD was rare and visions were scarce.
“Perhaps the impiety and impurity that prevailed in the tabernacle, and no doubt corrupted the whole nation, had provoked God, as a token of his displeasure, to withdraw the Spirit of prophecy, till the decree had gone forth for the raising up of a more…”
Then the LORD called to Samuel, and he answered, “Here I am.” He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you have called me.”
“Samuel lay awake in his bed, his thoughts, no doubt, well employed (as David's Ps. lxiii. 6 ), when the Lord called to him, bishop Patrick thinks out of the most holy place, and so the Chaldee paraphrase reads it, A voice was heard out…”
Once again, for the third time, the LORD called to Samuel. He got up, went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you have called me.”
“Thus even the infirmities and mistakes of those whom God employs are overruled by infinite Wisdom, and made serviceable to his purposes.”
Then the LORD said to Samuel, “I am about to do something in Israel at which the ears of all who hear it will tingle.
“Lord, how terrible art thou in thy judgments! If this be done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? Note, God's judgments upon others should affect us with a holy fear, Ps. cxix.”
I told him that I would judge his house forever for the iniquity of which he knows, because his sons blasphemed God and he did not restrain them.
“O what a great deal of guilt and corruption is there in us concerning which we may say, "It is the iniquity which our own heart knoweth, we are conscious to ourselves of it!"”
Samuel lay down until the morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision,
“Our secret communion with God is not to be proclaimed upon the house-tops. (3.) He feared to show Eli the vision.”
So all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the LORD.
“He that began betimes to be good soon came to do good. His established commission from God, and established reputation with the people, gave him a great opportunity of shining as a light in Israel.”
The Philistines arrayed themselves against Israel, and as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who struck down about four thousand men on the battlefield.
“Israel, who were the aggressors, were smitten, and had 4000 men killed upon the spot. God had promised that one of them should chase a thousand; but now, on the contrary, Israel is smitten before the Philistines.”
So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought back the ark of the covenant of the LORD of Hosts, who sits enthroned between the cherubim.
“And yet indeed they did but make an idol of the ark, and looked upon it to be as much an image of the God of Israel as those idols which the heathen worshipped were of their gods.”
Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.
“Here they were as much out in their history as in their divinity: the plagues of Egypt were inflicted before the ark was made and before Israel came into the wilderness; but some confused traditions they had of wonders wrought by or for Israel when…”
So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and each man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great—thirty thousand foot soldiers of Israel fell.
“The ark in the camp will add nothing to its strength when there is an Achan in it. The ark itself was taken by the Philistines; and Hophni and Phinehas, who it is likely kept close to it, and when it was in danger ventured…”