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
Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: “Go and assemble all the Jews who can be found in Susa, and fast for me.
“She believed that God's favour was to be obtained by prayer, that his people are a praying people, and he a prayer-hearing God.”
On the third day, Esther put on her royal attire and stood in the inner court of the palace across from the king’s quarters.
“When the heart is enlarged in communion with God it will be emboldened in doing and suffering for him.”
“What is it, Queen Esther?” the king inquired. “What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given to you.”
“She had a law against her; we have a promise, many a promise, in favour of us: Ask, and it shall be given you.”
“If it pleases the king,” Esther replied, “may the king and Haman come today to the banquet I have prepared for the king.”
“(5.) She hoped at the banquet of wine to have a fairer and more favourable opportunity of presenting her petition. Wisdom is profitable to direct how to manage some men that are hard to deal with, and to take them by the right handle.”
Esther replied, “This is my petition and my request: If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition…
“Perhaps her heart failed her now when she was going to make her request, and she desired to take some further time for prayer, that God would give her a mouth and wisdom.”
Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home. And calling for his friends and his wife Zeresh,
“What a struggle had he in his own bosom between his anger, which required Mordecai's death immediately ( O that I had of his flesh! 31 ), and his malice, which had determined to wait for the general massacre!”
“What is more,” Haman added, “Queen Esther invited no one but me to join the king at the banquet she prepared, and I am invited back tomorrow along with the…
“Note, Self-admirers and self-flatterers are really self-deceivers. Haman pleased himself with the fancy that the queen, by this repeated invitation, designed to honour him, whereas really she designed to accuse him, and, in calling him to the banquet, did but call him to the bar.”
That night sleep escaped the king; so he ordered the Book of Records, the Chronicles, to be brought in and read to him.
“But God put it into his heart to call for it, rather than for music or songs, which the Persian kings used to be attended with ( Dan. vi. 18 ) and which would have been more likely to compose him to rest.”
And there it was found recorded that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh, two of the eunuchs who guarded the king’s entrance, when they had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.
“Good services are sometimes so far from being a man's preferment that they will not be his protection. Mordecai is at this time, by the king's edict, doomed to destruction, with all the Jews, though it is owned that he deserved dignity.”
Haman entered, and the king asked him, “What should be done for the man whom the king is delighted to honor?”
“He had a better opinion of his interest than there was reason for. He thought the king loved and valued no one but himself, but he was deceived.”
“Hurry,” said the king to Haman, “and do just as you proposed. Take the robe and the horse to Mordecai the Jew, who is sitting at the king’s gate.
“But how is he thunderstruck when the king bids him not to order all this to be done, but to do it himself to Mordecai the Jew, the very man he hated above all men and whose ruin he was now designing!”
So Haman took the robe and the horse, arrayed Mordecai, and paraded him through the city square, crying out before him, “This is what is done for the man whom…
“Upon this account it was agreeable to Mordecai as it was an indication of the king's favour, and gave hope that Esther would prevail for the reversing of the edict against the Jews.”
Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened.
“Two things they grounded their prognostications upon:-- (1.) This Mordecai was of the seed of the Jews; feeble Jews their enemies sometimes called them, but formidable Jews they sometimes found them.”
While they were still speaking with Haman, the king’s eunuchs arrived and rushed him to the banquet that Esther had prepared.
“He thought it seasonable, in hopes it would revive his drooping spirits and save his sinking honour. But really it was seasonable because, his spirits being broken by this sore disappointment, he might the more easily be run down by Esther's complaint against him.”
and as they drank their wine on that second day, the king asked once more, “Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given to you.
“If the king had now forgotten that Esther had an errand to him, and had not again asked what it was, she could scarcely have known how to renew it herself; but he was mindful of it, and now was bound with the threefold cord…”
Esther replied, “The adversary and enemy is this wicked man—Haman!” And Haman stood in terror before the king and queen.
“Haman is soon apprehensive of his danger: He was afraid before the king and queen; and it was time for him to fear when the queen was his prosecutor, the king his judge, and his own conscience a witness against him; and the surprising operations…”
In his fury, the king arose from drinking his wine and went to the palace garden, while Haman stayed behind to beg Queen Esther for his life, for he realized…
“When we are angry we should pause awhile before we come to any resolution, as those that have a rule over our own spirits and are governed by reason. Haman becomes a humble petitioner to the queen for his life.”
So they hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the fury of the king subsided.
“The enemies of God's church have often been thus taken in their own craftiness. In the morning Haman was designing himself for the robes and Mordecai for the gallows; but the tables are turned: Mordecai has the crown, Haman the cross.”
That same day King Xerxes awarded Queen Esther the estate of Haman, the enemy of the Jews.
“His houses and lands, good sand chattels, and all the money he had heaped up which he was prime-minister of state (which, we may suppose, was no little), are given to Esther; they are all her own, added to the allowance she already had.”
The king extended the gold scepter toward Esther, and she arose and stood before the king.
“Her petition is that the king, having put away Haman, would put away the mischief of Haman and his device against the Jews, that that might not take place now that he was taken off.”
“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if I have found favor in his sight, and the matter seems proper to the king, and I am pleasing in his…
“Now it was that she mingled her tears with her words, that she wept and made supplication; we read of no tears when she begged for her own life, but, now that she was sure of that, she wept for her people.”
“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if I have found favor in his sight, and the matter seems proper to the king, and I am pleasing in his…
“If the king were indeed, as he seemed to be, troubled that such a decree was made, he could not do less than revoke it; for what is repentance, but undoing, to the utmost of our power, what we have done amiss?”
A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued in every province and published to all the people, so that the Jews would be ready on that…
“No better could come of men's pretending to be wise above what is given them. Great expedition was used in dispersing this decree, the king himself being in pain lest it should come too late and any mischief should be done to the Jews by…”
Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal garments of blue and white, with a large gold crown and a purple robe of fine linen.
“Haman was hanged; and, when the wicked perish, there is shouting, Prov. xi. Mordecai was preferred; and, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.”
Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal garments of blue and white, with a large gold crown and a purple robe of fine linen.
“It was but lately that we had Esther and Mordecai in tears and in fears, but fasting and praying; now let us see how to them there arose light in darkness.”