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
All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; they lack the strength to flee in the face of the…
“The beauty of holiness was the beauty of the daughter of Zion; when the temple, that holy and beautiful house, was destroyed, her beauty was gone; that was the breaking of the staff of beauty, the taking away of the pledges and seals of the…”
The adversary has seized all her treasures. For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary—those You had forbidden to enter Your assembly.
“What these pleasant things are we may learn from Isa. lxiv. 11 , where, to the complaint of the burning of the temple, it is added, All our pleasant things are laid waste; the ark and the altar, and all the other tokens of God's…”
Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see!
“She here looks beyond the instruments to the author of her troubles, and owns them all to be directed, determined, and disposed of by him: "It is the Lord that has afflicted me, and he has afflicted me because he is angry with me; the…”
I called out to my lovers, but they have betrayed me. My priests and elders perished in the city while they searched for food to keep themselves alive.
“Those that made court to her in her prosperity were shy of her, and strange to her, in her adversity. Happy are those that have made God their friend and keep themselves in his love, for he will not deceive them!”
See, O LORD, how distressed I am! I am churning within; my heart is pounding within me, for I have been most rebellious.
“Abroad the sword bereaves and slays all that comes in its way, and at home all provisions are cut off by the besiegers, so that there is as death, that is, famine, which is as bad as the pestilence, or worse-- the sword without and…”
People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have caused it.
“Note, Our prayers may and must agree with God's word; and what day God has here called we are to call for, and no other.”
How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth.
“The beauty of Israel is now cast down from heaven to the earth; their princes ( 2 Sam. i. 19 ), their religious worship, their beauty of holiness, all that which recommended them to the affection and esteem of their neighbours and rendered them amiable…”
Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah.
“He has given up their glory, which was looked upon as sacred (that is a character we give to majesty), to be trampled upon and profaned; and no marvel that the king and the priest, whose characters were always deemed venerable and inviolable, are despised…”
He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths.
“He has abandoned them; he looks upon them as no longer worthy of the honours conveyed to them by the covenants of royalty and priesthood, but as having forfeited both; and then Zedekiah the king was used despitefully, and Seraiah the chief priest put to…”
Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars.
“Note, It is just with God to debase those by his judgments who have by sin debased themselves. Time was when the ordinances of God were administered among them in their power and purity, and they had those tokens of God's presence with them; but…”
The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.
“(2.) Prophets should warn people of the judgments of God coming upon them, but these saw for them false burdens; the messages they pretended to deliver to them from God they knew to be false, and falsely ascribed to God; so that, by soothing them…”
The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity.
“Note, In all the providences of God concerning his church it is good to take notice of the fulfilling of his word; for there is an exact agreement between the judgments of God's hand and the judgments of his mouth, and when they are compared…”
Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured?
“(4.) This was the Lord's doing; he suffered the sword of the Chaldeans to devour thus without distinction: Thou has slain them in the day of thy anger, for it is God that kills and makes alive, and saves alive, as he pleases.”
He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.
“He has hedged me about, that I cannot get out. " When Jerusalem was besieged it was said to be compassed in on every side, Luke xix.”
Remember my affliction and wandering, the wormwood and the gall. Surely my soul remembers and is humbled within me.
“It was an affliction that was misery itself. My affliction and my transgression (so some read it), my trouble and my sin that brought it upon me; this was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery.”
Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail.
“That great is his faithfulness. Though the covenant seemed to be broken, they owned that it still continued in full force; and, though Jerusalem be in ruins, the truth of the Lord endures for ever.”
For the Lord will not cast us off forever. Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion according to His abundant loving devotion.
“Therefore the sufferer is thus penitent, thus patient, because he believes that God is gracious and merciful, which is the great inducement both to evangelical repentance and to Christian patience.”
For He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.
“He comes out of his place to punish, for his place is the mercy-seat. He delights not in the misery of any of his creatures, but, as it respects his own people, he is so far from it that in all their afflictions he is…”
To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the land, to deny a man justice before the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuit—of these the Lord does not…
“If men injure them under colour of law, and in the pretended administration of justice,--if they turn aside the right of a man, so that he cannot discover what his rights are or cannot come at them, they are out of his reach,--if they subvert…”
Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven:
“We must pray to him, with a believing expectation to receive mercy from him; for that is implied in our lifting up our hands to him (a gesture commonly used in prayer and sometimes put for it, as Ps. cxli.”
“We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven.”
“Note, It becomes us, when we are in trouble, to justify God, by owning our sins, and laying the load upon ourselves for them. Call sin a transgression, call it a rebellion, and you do not miscall it.”
You have covered Yourself in anger and pursued us; You have killed without pity.
“Their enemies persecuted and slew them, but that was not the worst of it; they were but the instruments in God's hand: " Thou hast persecuted us, and thou hast slain us, though we expected thou wouldst protect and deliver us."”
You have covered Yourself with a cloud that no prayer can pass through.
“"This cloud is so thick that our prayers seem as if they were lost in it; they cannot pass through; we cannot obtain an audience."”
until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees.
“"If God, who now covers himself with a cloud, as if he took no notice of our troubles ( Job xxii. 13 ), would but shine forth, all would be well; if he look upon us, we shall be saved, " Ps. lxxx.”
Without cause my enemies hunted me like a bird.
“They have done it without cause, without any provocation given them. Though God was righteous, they were unrighteous. David often complains of those that hated him without cause; and such are the enemies of Christ and his church, John xv.”