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
Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with…
“Others think that the whole book of Deuteronomy was written upon this monument, or at least the statutes and judgments from ch. xii. to the end of ch. xxvi.”
Moreover, you are to build there an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. You must not use any iron tool on them.
“Christ, our altar, is a stone cut out of the mountain without hands ( Dan. ii. 34, 35 ), and therefore refused by the builders, as having no form or comeliness, but accepted of God the Father, and made the head of the corner.”
There you are to sacrifice your peace offerings, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God.
“This signified, [1.] The consent they gave to the covenant; for the parties to a covenant ratified the covenant by feasting together.”
Then Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel: “Be silent, O Israel, and listen! This day you have become the people of the LORD your God.
“It was to be done but once, and at their entrance into the land of promise, in token of their taking possession of it under the several provisos and conditions contained in this law.”
“When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.
“The curses are here expressed, but not the blessings; for as many as were under the law were under the curse, but it was a honour reserved for Christ to bless us, and so to do that for us which the law could not do…”
‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’
“Whether it be a graven image or a molten image, it comes all to one, it is an abomination to the Lord, even though it be not set up in public, but in a secret place,--though it be not actually worshipped, nor is it said…”
‘Cursed is he who does not put the words of this law into practice.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
“By our obedience to the law we set our seal to it, and so confirm it, as by our disobedience we do what lies in us to disannul it, Ps. cxix.”
Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance, you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you…
“God is a Master that will be served with gladness, and delights to hear us sing at our work. (3.)”
If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your…
“Note, (1.) God justly expects from us that we should fear his fearful name; and, which is strange, that name which is here proposed as the object of our fear is, T HE L ORD THY G OD , which is very fitly here put…”
These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant He had made…
“It does not lie in the power of ministers to fix the terms of the covenant; they are only to dispense the seals of it.”
and so that He may establish you today as His people, and He may be your God as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham…
“The principal design of the renewing of this covenant at this time was to fortify them against temptations to idolatry. Though other sins will be the sinner's ruin, yet this was the sin that was likely to be their ruin.”
The LORD uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath, and He cast them into another land, where they are today.’
“So that, how dreadful soever the desolation was, the Lord was righteous in it, which is acknowledged, Dan. ix. "Thus" (says Mr.”
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of…
“But if any ask further why God would be at such a vast expense of miracles to form such a people, whose apostasy and ruin he plainly foresaw, why he did not by his almighty grace prevent it, or what he intends yet to do…”
Even if you have been banished to the farthest horizon, He will gather you and return you from there.
“One of the Chaldee paraphrasts applies this to the Messiah, explaining it thus: The word of the Lord shall gather you by the hand of Elias the great priest, and shall bring you by the hand of the king Messiah; for this was God's covenant…”
But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, but are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you today that…
“Observe, It is not for every failure in the particulars of their duty that ruin is threatened, but for apostasy and idolatry: though every violation of the command deserved the curse, yet the nation would be destroyed by that only which is the violation of…”
Then the LORD appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent.
“This is the only time in all this book that we read of the glory of God appearing, whereas we often read of it in the three foregoing books, which perhaps signifies that in the latter days, under the evangelical law, such visible appearances as…”
And the LORD said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they…
“Worshipping the gods of the Canaanites (who had been the natives, but henceforward were to be looked upon as the strangers of that land) would undoubtedly be counted a deserting of God, and, like adultery, a violation of the covenant.”
Let my teaching fall like rain and my speech settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass, like showers on tender plants.
“"It shall be a beating sweeping rain to the rebellious;" so one of the Chaldee paraphrasts expounds the first clause.”
He said: “I will hide My face from them; I will see what will be their end. For they are a perverse generation—children of unfaithfulness.
“They were faithless, and a people that could not be trusted. When he saved them, and took them into covenant, he said, Surely they are children that will not lie ( Isa. lxiii.”
They have provoked My jealousy by that which is not God; they have enraged Me with their worthless idols.
“But God can make the weakest instrument a scourge to the strongest sinner; and those that by sin insult their might Creator are justly insulted by the meanest of their fellow-creatures.”
But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.
“They were planted a choice vine, wholly a right seed, but by sin had become the degenerate plant of a strange vine ( Jer. ii. 21 ), and not only transcribed the iniquity of Sodom, but outdid it, Ezek. xvi.”
Let Reuben live and not die, nor his men be few.”
“"Though he must not expect to flourish ( Gen. xlix. 4 ), yet let him not perish." All the Chaldee paraphrasts refer this to the other world: Let Reuben live in life eternal, and not die the second death, so Onkelos.”
They will call the peoples to a mountain; there they will offer sacrifices of righteousness.
“This prophecy concerning Zebulun perhaps looks as far as the preaching of Christ and his apostles, which began in the land of Zebulun ( Matt. iv.”
Concerning Dan he said: “Dan is a lion’s cub, leaping out of Bashan.”
“To the particular victories obtained by Samson (who was of this tribe) over the Philistines.”
Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak, and his vitality had not diminished.
“He was old, it is true, but he had not yet attained to the years of the life of his fathers; his father Amram lived to be 137; his grandfather Kohath 133; his great grandfather Levi 137; And why must Moses, whose life was more…”