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.
“God will certainly do them good because he rejoices over them. They are dear to him; he makes his boast of them, and therefore will not only do them good, but will delight in doing them good. When he punishes them it is with reluctance.”
“This is mentioned to reconcile Jeremiah to his new purchase. Though he had bought a piece of ground and could not go to see it, yet he must believe that this was the pledge of many a purchase, and those but faint resemblances of the purchased possessions in th…”
“We may apply it more generally, and observe, [1.] That peace and truth are the great subject-matter of divine revelation. These promises here lead us to the gospel of Christ, and in that God has revealed to us peace and truth, the method of true peace--truth t…”
“(3.) Is sin the procuring cause of all their troubles? That shall be pardoned and subdued, and so the root of the judgments shall be killed,”
“In allusion to that sprinkling, David prays, Purge me with hyssop. [2.] By sin they have become guilty, and obnoxious to his justice; but he will pardon all their iniquities, will remove the punishment to which for sin they were bound over. All who by sanctify…”
“16 In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The L ORD our righteousness. Here is a further prediction of the happy state of Judah and Jerusalem after their glorious return out of …”
“Note, Nothing is more the praise and honour of a people than to have God the glory of it, the glory both of the power and of the goodness by which it is effected; they shall praise him both as the Lord of hosts and as the God who is good and whose mercy endure…”
“The industry of the country, and their return to their original plainness and simplicity, from which, in the corrupt ages, they had sadly degenerated.”
“Christ is here prophesied of, 1. He is a branch of righteousness, not a usurper, for he grows up unto David, descends from his loins, with whom the covenant of royalty was made, and is that seed with whom that covenant should be established, so that his title …”
“That the house of David, the house of Levi, and the house of Israel, shall flourish again, and be established, and all three in the kingdom of Christ; a gospel ministry and the gospel church shall continue while the world stands,”
“God speaketh once, yea, twice, for the encouragement of his people. We are not only so disobedient that we have need of precept upon precept to bring us to our duty, but so distrustful that we have need of promise upon promise to bring us to our comfort. This …”
“The covenant of the priesthood is called a covenant of peace ( Num. xxv. 12 ), of life and peace, Mal. ii. Now we are sure that this covenant is not broken, nor in the least weakened, while Jesus Christ is himself our life and our peace.”
“This intimates that Christ shall have a church on earth to the world's end; he shall see a seed in which he shall prolong his days till time and day shall be no more. Christ's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; and when the end cometh, and not till then, it sh…”
“Christ is that seed of David that is to be perpetual dictator to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and, as this people shall never want such a king, so this king shall never want such a people. Christianity shall continue in the dominion of Christ, and th…”
“Zedekiah is dead, who drank the dregs of all the ages that went before him, that is, who suffered for the sins of his ancestors, the measure of iniquity being filled up in his days. They shall thus lament him, saith the Lord, for I have pronounced the word; an…”
“It is a mercy to great men to have those about them that will deal faithfully with them, and tell them the evil consequences of their evil courses, that they may reform and live. The Servants Re-enslaved. 8 This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the L O…”
“But this shows what liberty to sin really--it is but a liberty to the sorest judgments. That, since they had brought their servants back into confinement in their houses, God would make them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth, where they should l…”
“This prophecy concerning Zedekiah was delivered to Jeremiah, and by him to the parties concerned, before he was shut up in the prison, for we find this prediction here made the ground of his commitment, as appears by the recital of some passages out of it, ch.…”
“This was the first of the judicial laws which God gave them ( Exod. xxi. 2 ), and there was good reason for this law. (1.) God had put honour upon that nation, and he would have them thus to preserve the honour of it themselves and to put a difference between …”
“And this is called a covenant; for our performance of the duty required is the condition of the continuance of the favours God has bestowed. This law they and their fathers had broken. Their worldly profit swayed more with them than God's command or covenant.”
“(1.) The prophets faithfully admonished them concerning their sin. From them they heard that they should let their Hebrew servants go free,”
“Though it was their trouble that drove them to it, yet he was well pleased with it; and if they had persevered in this act of mercy to the poor, to their poor servants, it might have been a lengthening of their tranquillity, Dan. iv.”
“It was a contempt of the command he had given them, as if that were of no force at all, but they might either keep it or break it as they thought fit. It was a contempt of the covenant they had made with him, and of that wrath which they had imprecated upon th…”
“This was a great abuse to their servants, to whom servitude would be more irksome, after they had had some taste of the pleasures of liberty. It was a great shame to themselves that they could not keep in a good mind when they were in it. But it was especially…”
“That, since they had emboldened themselves in returning to their sin, contrary to their covenant, by the retreat of the Chaldean army from them, God would therefore bring it upon them again: "They have now gone up from you, and your fright is over for the pres…”