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
No one shall stand against you all the days of your life.
“We need the presence of God, not only when we are beginning our work to set us in, but in the progress of it to further us with a continual help.”
Anyone who rebels against your order and does not obey your words, all that you command him, will be put to death. Above all, be strong and courageous!”
“Some think that in this statute they had an eye to that law concerning the prophet God would raise up like unto Moses, which they think, though it refer chiefly to Christ, yet takes in Joshua by the way as a type of him, that…”
Now therefore, please swear to me by the LORD that you will indeed show kindness to my family, because I showed kindness to you.
“Yet this Rahab was afterwards advanced to be a princess in Israel, the wife of Salmon, and one of the ancestors of Christ, Matt. i.”
unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother…
“This was like the blood sprinkled upon the door-post, which secured the first-born from the destroying angel, and, being of the same colour, some allude to this also to represent the safety of believers under the protection of the blood of Christ sprinkled on the…”
Now the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you just as…
“Some have observed that it was at the banks of Jordan that God began to magnify Joshua, and at the same place he began to magnify our Lord Jesus as Mediator; for John was baptizing at Bethabara, the house of passage, and there it was…”
He continued, “This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that He will surely drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites…
“(2.) A sure pledge of the conquest of Canaan. "If the living God is among you, expelling he will expel (so the Hebrew phrase is) from before you the Canaanites. " He will do it certainly, and do it effectually.”
Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth will go ahead of you into the Jordan.
“Some observe an accent in the original, which they think directs us to translate it somewhat more emphatically, Behold the ark of the covenant, even the ark of the Lord, or even of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. (3.)”
Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.
“It did shut up, and it was shut up (so it is in the margin); it did shut up itself, being strongly fortified both by art and nature, and it was shut up by the obstinacy and resolution of the inhabitants, who agreed never to…”
So when the rams’ horns sounded, the people shouted. When they heard the blast of the horn, the people gave a great shout, and the wall collapsed.
“An abstract of this story we find among the trophies of faith, Heb. xi. "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." The Siege of Jericho.”
Meanwhile, Joshua told the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the house of the prostitute and bring out the woman and all who are with her…
“They were best able to do it who knew her and her house, and they were fittest to do it, that it might appear it was for the sake of her kindness to them that she was thus distinguished and had her life given her…”
Then the Israelites burned up the city and everything in it. However, they put the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the LORD’s…
“The preservation of Rahab the harlot, or inn-keeper, who perished not with those that believed not, Heb. xi.”
They will pursue us until we have drawn them away from the city, for they will say, ‘The Israelites are running away from us as they did before.’
“God had made use of them only for the rebuking of Israel, with a purpose, when the correction was over, to throw the rod itself into the fire; howbeit, they meant not so, but it was in their heart to destroy and cut off, Isa.”
Now Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set up an ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city.
“If we admit such a seeming disturbance in the order of the narrative (of which, perhaps, similar instances might be cited from the other scripture histories), it seems most probable that there was but one ambushment, which consisted only of 5000, enough for such a…”
So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolation to this day.
“And, though there was no curse entailed upon him that should rebuild it, yet, it seems, it was not rebuilt unless it be the same with Aijah, which we read of, long after, Neh. xi.”
But the people of Gibeon, having heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai,
“Other people heard those tidings, and were irritated thereby to make war upon Israel; but the Gibeonites heard them and were induced to make peace with them.”
This is how we will treat them: We will let them live, so that no wrath will fall on us because of the oath we swore to them.”
“He that ratifies a promise with an oath imprecates the divine vengeance if he wilfully break his promise, and has reason to expect that divine justice will take him at his word. God is not mocked, and therefore oaths are not to be jested with.”
Now we are in your hands. Do to us whatever seems good and right to you.”
“Those of the very meanest and most despicable condition are described to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, Deut. xxix. But skin for skin, liberty, and labour, and all that a man has, will he give for his life, and no ill bargain.”
Now we are in your hands. Do to us whatever seems good and right to you.”
“And thus the ransom of their lives is paid; dominion is acquired by the preservation of a life that lies at mercy ( servus dicitur a servando--a servant is so called from the act of saving ); they owe their service to those to whom…”
On the day that the LORD gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the LORD in the presence of Israel: “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O…
“Now, First, It looked great for Joshua to say, Sun, stand thou still. His ancestor Joseph had indeed dreamed that the sun and moon did homage to him; but who would have thought that, after it had been fulfilled in the figure, it should be…”
Then Joshua said, “Open the mouth of the cave and bring those five kings out to me.”
“(2.) He would hereby have the promise by Moses made good ( Deut. xxxiii. 29 ), Thou shalt tread upon their high places, that is, their great men, which should the rather be speedily fulfilled in the letter because they are the very last words…”
“Do not be afraid or discouraged,” Joshua said. “Be strong and courageous, for the LORD will do this to all the enemies you fight.”
“(4.) He would hereby give a type and figure of Christ's victories over the powers of darkness, and believers' victories through him. All the enemies of the Redeemer shall be made his footstool, Ps. cx.”
So Joshua conquered the whole region—the hill country, the Negev, the foothills, and the slopes, together with all their kings—leaving no survivors.
“When the heathen are to be cast out to make room for this vine ( Ps. lxxx. 8 ) divine justice appears more prodigal than ever of human blood, that the Israelites might find themselves for ever obliged to spend their lives to the glory…”
No city made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites living in Gibeon; all others were taken in battle.
“It is intimated that other cities might have made as good terms for themselves, without ragged clothes and clouted shoes, if they would have humbled themselves, but they never so much as desired conditions of peace.”
So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses.
“There failed not one word of the promise. Our successes and enjoyments are then doubly sweet and comfortable to us when we see them flowing to us from the promise (this is according to what the Lord said ), as our obedience is then acceptable…”
Moses, the servant of the LORD, and the Israelites had struck them down and given their land as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
“Joshua's services and achievements are confessedly great, but let not those under Moses be overlooked and forgotten, since God was the same who wrought both, and both put together proclaim him the Alpha and Omega of Israel's great salvation.”