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
Behold, the wicked man travails with evil; he conceives trouble and births falsehood.
“The sinner's head with its politics conceives mischief, contrives it with a great deal of art, lays the plot deep, and keeps it close; the sinner's heart with its passions travails with iniquity, and is in pain to be delivered of the malicious projects it…”
I will thank the LORD for His righteousness and sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.
“In this David was a type of Christ, who was himself, and still is in his members, thus injured, but will certainly be righted at last. David Prays Against His Enemies; Prayer for Sinners and Saints.”
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens.
“But this looks further, to the gospel of Christ, by which the name of God, as it is notified by divine revelation, which before was great in Israel only, came to be so in all the earth, the utmost ends of which have thus been…”
You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor.
“He is but for a little while lower than the angels, while his great soul is cooped up in a house of clay, but the children of the resurrection shall be isangeloi -- angels' peers ( Luke xx.”
You made him ruler of the works of Your hands; You have placed everything under his feet:
“His charter, by which he holds this royalty, bears equal date with his creation ( Gen. i. 28 ) and was renewed after the flood, Gen. ix.”
I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will recount all Your wonders.
“Joy and praise are properly expressed by singing psalms. When God has shown himself to be above the proud enemies of the church we must take occasion thence to give glory to him as the Most High.”
For You have upheld my just cause; You sit on Your throne judging righteously.
“God sits in the throne of judgment. To him it belongs to decide controversies, to determine appeals, to avenge the injured, and to punish the injurious; for he has said, Vengeance is mine.”
The enemy has come to eternal ruin, and You have uprooted their cities; the very memory of them has vanished.
“The malicious and vexatious neighbours of Israel, as the Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Syrians, had made incursions upon them (when there was no king in Israel to fight their battles), had destroyed their cities and done what they could to make their memorial perish…”
The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
“It is the lot of God's people to be oppressed in this world and to have troublous times appointed to them.”
Sing praises to the LORD, who dwells in Zion; proclaim His deeds among the nations.
“As the special residence of his glory is in heaven, so the special residence of his grace is in his church, of which Zion was a type.”
For the Avenger of bloodshed remembers; He does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.
“When God comes to make inquisition for blood by his judgments on earth, before he comes to do it by the judgment of the great day, he remembers them, remembers every drop of the innocent blood which they have shed, and will return it sevenfold…”
The nations have fallen into a pit of their making; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden.
“This is very applicable to the kingdom of the Messiah, the enemies of which have been in part destroyed already, and shall be yet more and more till they all be made his footstool, which we are to assure ourselves of, that God may have…”
The LORD is known by the justice He brings; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. Higgaion Selah
“(2.) So as to get honour to himself: The Lord is known, that is, he makes himself known, by these judgments which he executes.”
The wicked will return to Sheol— all the nations who forget God.
“Note, (1.) Forgetfulness of God is the cause of all the wickedness of the wicked. (2.) There are nations of those that forget God, multitudes that live without God in the world, many great and many mighty nations, that never regard him nor desire the…”
Rise up, O LORD, do not let man prevail; let the nations be judged in Your presence.
“"Lord, reckon with them: Let the heathen be judges in thy sight, that is, let them be plainly called to an account for all the dishonour done to thee and the mischief done to thy people."”
In pride the wicked pursue the needy; let them be caught in the schemes they devise.
“Tyranny, both in state and church, owes its origin to pride. The psalmist, having begun this description, presently inserts a short prayer, a prayer in a parenthesis, which is an advantage and no prejudice to the sense: Let them be taken, as proud people often…”
For the wicked man boasts in the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.
“Ephraim said, I have become rich, I have found me out substance, Hos. xii. "Now, Lord, is it for thy glory to suffer a sinful man thus to pretend to the sovereignty and felicity of a God?" (2.)”
They are crushed and beaten down; the hapless fall prey to his strength.
“It intimates, likewise, that they cover their malicious designs with the pretence of meekness and humility, and kindness to those they design the greatest mischief to; they seem to humble themselves to take cognizance of the poor, and concern themselves in their concernments, when it…”
to vindicate the fatherless and oppressed, that the men of the earth may strike terror no more.
“First, He is but a man of the earth, a man out of the earth (so the word is), sprung out of the earth, and therefore mean, and weak, and hastening to the earth again.”
In the LORD I take refuge. How then can you say to me: “Flee like a bird to your mountain!
“Even when they have other things to stay themselves upon, yet they do not, they dare not, stay upon them, but on God only.”
The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD is on His heavenly throne. His eyes are watching closely; they examine the sons of men.
“Or, He is in his holy temple, that is, in his church; he is a God in covenant and communion with his people, through a Mediator, of whom the temple was a type.”
On the wicked He will rain down fiery coals and sulfur; a scorching wind will be their portion.
“It shall be as snares upon them, to hold them fast, and keep them prisoners, till the day of reckoning comes.”
For the LORD is righteous; He loves justice. The upright will see His face.
“He loves them and the work of his own grace in them. He is himself a righteous God, and therefore loves righteousness wherever he finds it and pleads the cause of the righteous that are injured and oppressed; he delights to execute judgment for them…”
They lie to one another; they speak with flattering lips and a double heart.
“This is the devil's image complete, a complication of malice and falsehood. The times are bad indeed when there is no such thing as sincerity to be met with, when an honest man knows not whom to believe nor whom to trust, nor dares put…”
They say, “With our tongues we will prevail. We own our lips—who can be our master?”
“(2.) An insolent contempt of God's dominion as if he had no propriety in them-- Our lips are our own (an unjust pretension, for who made man's mouth, in whose hand is his breath, and whose is the air he breathes in?)”