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
Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,” declares the LORD.
“Mr. Gataker well observes here, That earthly princes are not wont to go along with their ambassadors; but God goes along with those whom he sends, and is, by his powerful protection, at all times and in all places present with them; and with this…”
Then the LORD reached out His hand, touched my mouth, and said to me: “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.
“God not only put knowledge into his head, but words into his mouth; for there are words which the Holy Ghost teaches, 1 Cor. ii. It is fit God's message should be delivered in his own words, that it may be delivered accurately.”
See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant.”
“It is a strange commission that is here given him: See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms.”
Again the word of the LORD came to me, asking, “What do you see?” “I see a boiling pot,” I replied, “and it is tilting toward us from the north.”
“Some think that those scoffers referred to this who said ( Ezek. xi. 3 ), This city is the cauldron, and we are the flesh.”
Then the LORD said to me, “Disaster from the north will be poured out on all who live in the land.
“When there was friendship between Hezekiah and the king of Babylon they promised themselves many advantages out of the north; but it proved quite otherwise: out of the north their trouble arose. Thence sometimes the fiercest tempests come whence we expected fair weather.”
Get yourself ready. Stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not be intimidated by them, or I will terrify you before them.
“He was of the priests, and, as a priest, was authorized and appointed to teach the people; but to that authority and appointment God added the extraordinary commission of a prophet. Ezekiel also was a priest.”
This is what the LORD says: “What fault did your fathers find in Me that they strayed so far from Me, and followed worthless idols, and became worthless themselves?
“Idolatrous worships are vanities, Acts xiv. Idolaters are vain, for those that make idols are like unto them ( Ps. cxv. 8 ), as much stocks and stones as the images they worship, and good for as little. [3.]”
I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and bounty, but you came and defiled My land, and made My inheritance detestable.
“I brought you into a land of Carmel (so the word is); Carmel was a place of extraordinary fruitfulness, and Canaan was as one great fruitful field, Deut. viii. 7 . [5.]”
Is Israel a slave? Was he born into slavery? Why then has he become prey?
“Israel is my son, my first-born, Exod. iv. They are children; they are heirs. Nay, their extraction is noble; they are the seed of Abraham, God's friend, and of Jacob his chosen.”
Your own evil will discipline you; your own apostasies will reprimand you.
“Cleaving to sin is leaving God. (2.) The cause of sin; it is because his fear is not in us.”
As the thief is ashamed when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced.
“When these were first made the objects of worship they were supposed to be animated by some celestial power or spirit; but by degrees the thought of this was lost, and so vain did idolaters become in their imagination, even the princes and priests themselves…”
As the thief is ashamed when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced.
“As the thief is ashamed when, notwithstanding all his arts and tricks to conceal his theft, he is found, and brought to punishment, so are the house of Israel ashamed, not with a penitent shame for the sin they had been guilty of, but with…”
Now in the days of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done?
“But what we read in the histories of scripture should instruct us and affect us, as if we ourselves had been eye-witnesses of it.”
I thought that after she had done all these things, she would return to Me. But she did not return, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it.
“We read not that Elijah, that great reformer, ever mentioned their return to the house of David, while he was anxious for their return to the faithful service of the true God according as they had it among them.”
“Return, O faithless children,” declares the LORD, “for I am your master, and I will take you—one from a city and two from a family—and bring you to Zion.
“They are encouraged to return. " Repent, and be converted, and your sins shall be blotted out, Acts iii. You have incurred God's displeasure, but return to me, and I will not cause my anger to fall upon you.”
“In those days, when you multiply and increase in the land,” declares the LORD, “they will no longer discuss the ark of the covenant of the LORD.
“It is very likely (whatever the Jews suggest to the contrary) that the ark of the covenant was in the second temple, being restored by Cyrus with the other vessels of the house of the Lord, Ezra i.”
At that time Jerusalem will be called The Throne of the LORD, and all the nations will be gathered in Jerusalem to honor the name of the LORD.
“As the gospel got ground this throne of the Lord was set up even where Satan's seat had been.”
In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I…
“This happy coalescence between Israel and Judah in Canaan was a type of the uniting of Jews and Gentiles in the gospel church, when, all enmities being slain, they should become one sheepfold under one shepherd.”
But as a woman may betray her husband, so you have betrayed Me, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD.
“As an adulterous wife elopes from her husband, so have they gone a whoring from God. They were joined to God by a marriage-covenant, but they broke that covenant, they dealt treacherously with God, who had always dealt kindly and faithfully with them.”
A voice is heard on the barren heights, the children of Israel weeping and begging for mercy, because they have perverted their ways and forgotten the LORD their God.
“Sin is the perverting of our way, it is turning aside to crooked ways and perverting that which is right. Forgetting the Lord our God is at the bottom of all sin.”
From our youth, that shameful god has consumed what our fathers have worked for—their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters.
“Or, rather, Secondly, These had been sacrificed to their idols, had been separated unto that shame ( Hos. ix. 10 ), and they had devoured them without mercy; they did eat the fat of their sacrifices ( Deut. xxxii. 38 ), even their human sacrifices.”
Let us lie down in our shame; let our disgrace cover us. We have sinned against the LORD our God, both we and our fathers; from our youth even to…
“Sin has laid us under such rebukes of God's providence, and such reproaches of our own consciences, as surround us and fill us with shame. For we have sinned, and shame came in with sin and still attends upon it.”
For a voice resounds from Dan, proclaiming disaster from the hills of Ephraim.
“It was well if their sufferings put them in mind of their sins, the murders committed upon them of the murders committed by them; for God was now making inquisition for the innocent blood shed in Jerusalem, which the Lord would not pardon, 2 Kings…”
Disaster after disaster is proclaimed, for the whole land is laid waste. My tents are destroyed in an instant, my curtains in a moment.
“Though the cities held out for some time, the country was laid waste at the very first. The shepherds and all that lived in tents were plundered immediately; they and their effects fell into the enemies' hands; therefore we find the Rechabites, who dwelt in…”
I looked at the earth, and it was formless and void; I looked to the heavens, and they had no light.
“It is Tohu and Bohu, the words there used, as far as the land of Judea goes. It is confusion and emptiness, stripped of all its beauty, void of all its wealth, and, compared with what it was, every thing out of place and out…”