The Voices
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.
Short bio
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.
Notable works
2 listed
| Title | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments | 1710 | — |
| Directions for Daily Communion with God | 1712 | — |
Where to find them
Their words on MannaFest
14,170 quotes across 66 books
Where this voice speaks on the site — each quote links to the verse it was chosen for.
“This Jehoahaz is that young lion whom Ezekiel speaks of in his lamentation for the princes of Israel, that learnt to catch the prey and devour men (that was the evil which he did in the sight of the Lord); but the nations heard of him, he was taken in their pi…”
“He was a potent prince, and one that was the terror of the mighty in the land of the living; and yet his name would not have been known in sacred writ if he had not been employed in the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews.”
“Nebuchadnezzar began his reign in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. In his eighth year he made him his prisoner, but restored him upon his promise of faithfulness to him. That promise he kept about three years, but then rebelled, probably in hopes of assistance fr…”
“Now he came himself, and laid siege to the city. Now the word of God was fulfilled ( Deut. xxviii. 49 , &c.), The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, of fierce countenance, that shall first eat of the fruit of thy land and then besiege thee in all…”
“It was but lately that he had oppressed Israel, ch. xxiii. Now he is himself brought down and disabled to attempt any thing for the recovery of his losses or the assistance of his allies.”
“He and his royal family, his mother and wives, his servants and princes, delivered themselves up prisoners of war; this was the consequence of their being servants of sin.”
“Now the word of God by Isaiah was fulfilled ( ch. xx. 17 ), All that is in thy house shall be carried to Babylon.”
“The name which the king of Babylon gave him signifies The justice of the Lord, and was a presage of the glorifying of God's justice in his ruin. See how impious this Zedekiah was. Though the judgments of God upon his three immediate predecessors might have bee…”
“Formerly Jerusalem had been compassed with the favour of God as with a shield, but now their defence had departed from them and their enemies surrounded them on every side. Those that by sin have provoked God to leave them will find that innumerable evils will…”
“Jeremiah earnestly persuaded the king to surrender ( Jer. xxxviii. 17 ), but his heart was hardened to his destruction. At length the city was taken by storm: it was broken up,”
“But those as much deceive themselves who think to escape God's judgments as those who think to brave them; the feet of him that flees from them will as surely fail as the hands of him that fights against them. When God judges he will overcome. Intelligence was…”
“The people having forfeited the promises made concerning it, those promises must be understood of the gospel-temple, which is God's rest for ever. It is observable that the second temple was burnt by the Romans the same month, and the same day of the month, th…”
“Sin unwalls a people and takes away their defence. These walls were never repaired till Nehemiah's time. The residue of the people are carried away captive to Babylon,”
“The brazen vessels, and other appurtenances of the temple, are carried away, those of silver and gold being most of them gone before. Those two famous columns of brass, Jachin and Boaz, which signified the strength and stability of the house of God, were broke…”
“Thus has Jerusalem become as a widow, Lam. i. Ichabod--Where is the glory? The distraction and dispersion of the remnant that was left in Judah under Gedaliah,”
“When the things signified were sinned away what should the signs stand there for? Ahaz had profanely cut off the borders of the bases, and put the brazen sea upon a pavement of stones ( 2 Kings xvi. 17 ); justly therefore are the brass themselves, and the braz…”
“Now the scripture was fulfilled, The Lord shall bring thee, and the king which thou shalt set over thee, into a nation which thou hast not known, Deut. xxviii. Sin kept their fathers forty years out of Canaan, and now turned them out. The Lord is known by thos…”
“His father Ahikam was one that countenanced and protected Jeremiah when the princes had vowed his death, Jer. xxvi. It is probable that this Gedaliah, by the advice of Jeremiah, had gone over the Chaldeans, and had conducted himself so well that the king of Ba…”
“What a fatal breach was made upon them, soon afterwards, by the death of Gedaliah, within two months after he entered upon his government. The utter extirpation of the Jews, for the present, was determined, and therefore it was in vain for them to think of tak…”
“Ishmael, who was of the royal family, envying Gedaliah's advancement and the happy settlement of the people under him, though he could not propose to set up himself, resolved to ruin him, and basely slew him and all his friends, both Jews and Chaldeans.”
“Thus was there a full end made of them by their own folly and disobedience, and Egypt had the last of them, that the last verse of that chapter of threatenings might be fulfilled, after all the rest, Deut. xxviii. 68 , The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt agai…”
“However the death of afflicted saints is to them such a change as this was to Jehoiachin: it will release them out of their prison, shake off the body, that prison-garment, and open the way to their advancement; it will send them to the throne, to the table, o…”