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.
“He is good and his mercy endures for ever; let us therefore own our obligations to him and make him a return of our best affections and services. Give him the glory of his greatness, his mighty acts, proofs of his almighty power, wherein he has done great thin…”
“God's people are those whose principles are sound-- They keep judgment (they adhere to the rules of wisdom and religion, and their practices are agreeable); they do righteousness, are just to God and to all men, and herein they are steady and constant; they do…”
“He has an eye to the salvation of God, the great salvation, that of the soul, as the foundation of happiness: O visit me with thy salvation. "Afford me (says Dr. Hammond) that pardon and that grace which I stand in need of, and can hope for from none but thee.…”
“The chosen people of God have a good which is peculiar to them, which is the matter both of their gladness and of their glorying, which is their pleasure, and their praise. God's people have reason to be a cheerful people, and to boast in their God all the day…”
“They bewail the sins of their fathers when they were first formed into a people, which, since children often smart for, they are concerned to sorrow for, even further than to the third and fourth generation.”
“Their perverseness arising from this stupidity: They provoked him at the sea, even at the Red Sea. The provocation was, despair of deliverance (because the danger was great) and wishing they had been left in Egypt still, Exod. xiv. Quarrelling with God's provi…”
“(1.) He forced a passage for them through the sea: He rebuked the Red Sea for standing in their way and retarding their march, and it was dried up immediately; as, in the creation, at God's rebuke the waters fled, Ps. civ.”
“This people soon forgot them (God took notice of this, Exod. xxxii. 8 , They have turned aside quickly): They made haste, they forgot his works (so it is in the margin), which some make to be two separate instances of their sin.”
“Or this is put for that great plague with which the Lord smote them, while the flesh was yet between their teeth, as we read, Num. xi. It was the consumption of the life.”
“They forgot what was done but a few days before, which we may suppose they could not but talk of, even then, when, because they did not make a good use of it, they are said to forget it: it was what God did for them in Egypt, in the land of Ham, and by the Red…”
“The heavenly Canaan is a pleasant land. A promise is left us of entering into it; but there are many that despise it, that neglect and refuse the offer of it, that prefer the wealth and pleasure of this world before it, and grudge the pains and hazards of this…”
“Those that will not wait for God's counsel shall justly be given up to their own hearts' lusts, to walk in their own counsels. Many of their sins are here mentioned, together with the tokens of God's displeasure which they fell under for those sins.”
“Those that did often partake of the altar of the living God now ate the sacrifices of the dead, of the idols of Moab (that were dead images, or dead men canonized or deified), or sacrifices to the infernal deities on the behalf of their dead friends.”
“(2.) By stirring up Phinehas to use his power as a magistrate for the suppressing of the sin and checking the contagion of it. He stood up in his zeal for the Lord of hosts, and executed judgment upon Zimri and Cozbi, sinners of the first rank, genteel sinners…”
“But the way of sin is down-hill; omissions make way for commissions; when they neglect to destroy the heathen the next news we hear is, They were mingled among the heathen, made leagues with them and contracted an intimacy with them, so that they learned their…”
“They shed innocent blood, the most innocent, for it was infant-blood, nay, it was the blood of their sons and their daughters. See the power of the spirit that works in the children of disobedience, and see his malice.”
“Nay, he was sick of them: He abhorred his own inheritance, which once he had taken pleasure in; yet the change was not in him, but in them. This is the worst thing in sin, that it makes us loathsome to God; and the nearer any are to God in profession the more …”
“Observe here how the punishment answered to the sin: They mingled with the heathen and learned their works; from them they willingly took the infection of sin, and therefore God justly made use of them as the instruments of their correction. Sinners often see …”
“Those that by sin disparage themselves, and will not by repentance humble themselves, are justly debased, and humbled, and brought low, by the judgments of God.”
“It may be of use to us to sing this psalm, that, being put in mind by it of our sins, the sins of our land, and the sins of our fathers, we may be humbled before God and yet not despair of mercy, which even rebellious Israel often found with God. Praise for Di…”
“In the fountain he is good; in the streams his mercy endures for ever and never fails. A particular demand hereof from the redeemed of the Lord, which may well be applied spiritually to those that have an interest in the great Redeemer and are saved by him fro…”
“They wandered in the wilderness, where there was no trodden path, no company, but a solitary way, no lodging, no conveniences, no accommodations, no inhabited city where they might have quarters or refreshment.”
“Those that have constant plenty, and are every day fed to the full, know not what a miserable case it is to be hungry and thirsty, and to have no supply. This was sometimes the case of Israel in the wilderness, and perhaps of other poor travellers; but God's p…”
“God will certainly hear and help. When troubles become extreme that is man's time to cry; those who but whispered prayer before then cry aloud, and then it is God's time to succour.”
“It is applicable to our condition in this world; we are here as in a wilderness, have here no continuing city, but dwell in tents as strangers and pilgrims. But we are under the guidance of his wise and good providence, and, if we commit ourselves to it, we sh…”