Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

Matthew Henry and his world

In August 1662 the Act of Uniformity came into force in England and Wales. It required every minister to conduct worship by the Book of Common Prayer and to declare his assent to everything in it. Those who could not do so in good conscience lost their pulpits; counting those removed in the two years before, about two thousand ministers were put out. The event is remembered as the Great Ejection, and the Protestants who from then on worshipped outside the Church of England came to be called Nonconformists, or Dissenters. Philip Henry (1631–1696), minister of a country congregation in north-east Wales, was among those silenced at this time.

His son Matthew was born that October at Broad Oak, on the border of Wales and England. Philip Henry could no longer preach in a parish church, but by all accounts he led his household in worship every day, reading a passage, explaining it and praying. Matthew grew up hearing Scripture opened and applied at home, and it is not hard to see the same habits in the commentary he later wrote. It was meant for households and congregations rather than for scholars.

After a short time studying law at Gray's Inn in London, Matthew turned to the ministry. Presbyterian ministers ordained him in London in 1687, and that year he became minister of a Nonconformist congregation in Chester, in north-west England, which he served for twenty-five years. The Toleration Act of 1689 made such worship lawful, and his congregation was able to build its own meeting-house. In 1712 he moved to a congregation at Hackney, near London. Two years later, in June 1714, he was taken ill on the way back from a visit to Chester and died at Nantwich, aged fifty-one.

Henry was a pastor first and a writer second. Besides his commentary he left a life of his father and A Method for Prayer (1710), a guide to prayer built from the words of Scripture. His theology was that of the Puritans and the Westminster Confession, the Reformed faith of English Presbyterianism (see The Reformed confessions). Yet he is remembered less as a controversialist than as a man of warm and practical piety.

The Exposition and the Concise

Around 1704 Henry began a commentary on the whole Bible, his Exposition of the Old and New Testaments. It came out in volumes from Genesis onward, and by his death he had reached the end of Acts. The rest, from Romans to Revelation, was completed by a group of Nonconformist ministers who drew on the notes and writings he left. The finished work filled six large volumes and became one of the most widely read commentaries in the English-speaking churches. In the nineteenth century Charles Spurgeon advised every minister to read it carefully through at least once.

The Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible in this app is an abridgement of the Exposition. Henry did not make it himself: it abridges the parts finished after his death as well, so it was made later, by other hands. The app's text is the public-domain edition in CrossWire's Bible library, which follows the text of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL). Neither says who made the abridgement or when, so this guide will not guess. What can be seen is that the abridger seems to have worked by selecting, trimming and joining Henry's own sentences rather than by writing new ones, so the voice is still his.

You can see this inside the app. On the first verse of Genesis the Concise Commentary says:

And let our make and place as men, remind us of our duty as Christians, always to keep heaven in our eye, and the earth under our feet.

Matthew Henry, Genesis 1:1

John Wesley's note on the same verse reads:

And let our make and place, as men, mind us of our duty, as Christians, which is always to keep heaven in our eye, and the earth under our feet.

Wesley, Genesis 1:1

The two sentences are all but identical because both come from Henry's Exposition. Wesley disagreed with Henry about predestination, but in his notes on the Old Testament he condensed a great deal of Henry's work; Wesley's Explanatory Notes tells that story.

An abridgement also leaves things out. Henry's best-known saying on Genesis 2, that the woman was taken not from Adam's head to rule over him, nor from his feet to be trampled by him, but from his side to be his equal, protected and loved, belongs to the Exposition; it is not in the app's comment on that chapter. And from Romans to Revelation the Concise abridges the part of the Exposition that others completed. The app shows it under Henry's name like the rest, so when you read the comments on the letters and Revelation, remember that they rest on his successors' work as well as his own.

How Henry reads Scripture

Henry says briefly what a passage means and then turns at once to what it means for us. He cares less about the history of a word or the background of a text than about what the passage asks of the reader and what comfort it offers. On the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer he remarks, "Every word here has a lesson in it" Matthew Henry, Matthew 6:11, and then draws one from each word: we ask for bread, which teaches sobriety; for our bread, which teaches honesty and hard work; for daily bread, which teaches us to depend on God's providence day by day. This is the old Puritan way of preaching, opening the text, drawing out its doctrine and applying it, pressed into a single paragraph.

The application rests on clear doctrine. In the conversation with Nicodemus, Henry insists that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, not of human resolve: "It means that something is done in us, and for us, which we cannot do for ourselves" Matthew Henry, John 3:3. In Romans 8 the sequence from foreknowledge through predestination, calling and justification to glory is for him "a golden chain, one which cannot be broken" Matthew Henry, Romans 8:30. That is the Reformed account of salvation, in which God chooses by grace, calls effectually and keeps his people to the end (Effectual calling and perseverance). How Christians of other traditions read the same chapter is set out in What is predestination?

Doctrine, for Henry, is never for the head alone. In the same chapter of John he notices that Nicodemus came by night, and observes that "When religion is out of fashion, there are many Nicodemites" Matthew Henry, John 3:2. A little later he gives in a single line the reason people avoid the light: "Christ is hated, because sin is loved" Matthew Henry, John 3:20. On the thief who repented on the cross he holds comfort and warning together in one sentence:

It is certain that true repentance is never too late; but it is as certain that late repentance is seldom true.

Matthew Henry, Luke 23:42

Balanced clauses like these, homely images and sayings that stay in the memory are the marks of his style. In the same passage he writes, "Christ upon the cross, is gracious like Christ upon the throne" Matthew Henry, Luke 23:43. On the valley of the shadow of death in Psalm 23 he reminds the reader that "the shadow of a serpent will not sting, nor the shadow of a sword kill" Matthew Henry, Psalm 23:4. For Christ's sheep, he goes on, death is only a shadow and a valley to be walked through, with the mountain on the other side.

Henry reads the Old Testament toward Christ. The introduction to the Psalms says that every psalm either points to Christ directly or may lead the believer's thoughts to him, and the Song of Songs is read as a sacred allegory of the love between Christ and his church. In the narratives he often finds the story of the soul. The earth that was formless and empty at the beginning prompts the remark that "the work of grace in the soul is a new creation" Matthew Henry, Genesis 1:2. Readings like these continue a tradition that goes back to the Fathers gathered in The Catena Aurea. It helps to keep apart what a text first says and the lesson Henry draws from it.

Each chapter begins with an outline that divides it into sections, much as Henry divided his chapters in the Exposition. John 3, for example, falls into the talk with Nicodemus (verses 1–21) and John the Baptist's testimony (verses 22–36), and the comment follows those sections. A verse is always read inside its passage, its chapter and the whole Bible. And every part of the exposition aims at one thing:

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.

James 1:22

Henry ends his comment on this passage plainly: "It is not talking, but walking, that will bring us to heaven" Matthew Henry, James 1:25. His commentary wants its readers not only to know the Bible better but to live by it.

What it is good for, and its limits

The Concise is at its best as a companion to devotional reading. Read a passage, then Henry, and you will nearly always come away with a sentence to carry through the day. He comforts where the text comforts and warns where it warns, and from any passage he leads to Christ, to grace and to a holy life. Preachers and teachers will find in him the seed of an application; a family will find something to talk about after reading a chapter together.

It also covers the whole Bible. Of the commentaries in this app it is the only one with a comment on every chapter of all sixty-six books; the Catena covers the four Gospels, and Wesley's notes leave a few books out. Henry has something to say on the sacrificial laws of Leviticus, the genealogies of Chronicles and the shortest of the prophets, and what he says stands, on the whole, on ground that Protestants have shared since the Reformation: the authority of Scripture, salvation by grace through faith, and a piety centred on Christ. It is also the commentary the app's questions and lessons quote most often.

But it is the work of an English minister of three centuries ago, and it is abridged. First, Henry wrote before modern biblical scholarship. He took the traditional authors and dates of the books for granted; the introduction to Job, for instance, thinks it most likely that Job wrote the book himself and calls it the most ancient book in existence. The study of ancient Near Eastern texts, archaeology, the discovery of older manuscripts of the Bible and much of what is now known of Hebrew and Greek all came after him. His remarks on history, geography and language reflect the knowledge of his time; on such questions a recent reference work will serve you better.

Second, the Bible Henry expounded was the King James Version, translated from the Greek and Hebrew texts available in 1611, which differ in places from the texts most modern translations follow. In 1 John 5:7 the King James Version names three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; the Berean Standard Bible, like most modern versions, does not have those words. Henry comments on them, yet adds: "But whether this passage be cited or not, the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity stands equally firm and certain" Matthew Henry, 1 John 5:7. He seems aware of the question, and he will not rest a doctrine on one disputed verse.

Third, the Concise is brief. Where the Exposition gives reasons and weighs other readings, the Concise often keeps only the conclusion, and it says almost nothing about Hebrew and Greek words. It is a devotional exposition, not a technical commentary that works through hard questions of meaning. For the words, use the Original tab; for other readings, other commentaries.

Fourth, Henry reads as a Reformed Presbyterian. He expounds election and calling as we have seen, and on the Lord's Supper he writes, "This is my body; that is, spiritually, it signifies and represents his body" Matthew Henry, Matthew 26:26. That is the Reformed understanding of the Supper (The Supper: Christ's spiritual presence). Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran Christians read the same words differently, and the Methodist tradition that follows Wesley understands predestination differently. On such points Henry is one tradition's voice among several; What are baptism and the Lord's Supper? sets out the main views.

Fifth, it carries some views of its age. In Daniel, 2 Thessalonians and Revelation the commentary identifies the antichrist and Babylon with the papacy and Rome (Matthew Henry, 2 Thessalonians 2:5; Revelation 17:5). Many Protestants after the Reformation read these passages that way, and the Westminster Confession of 1647 itself called the Pope the antichrist (25.6). Many Presbyterian churches have since revised those words or distanced themselves from them, and Catholic readers will find these pages painful. On the Jewish people, the comment on Matthew 27:25 sees the crowd's cry about his blood as answered in the sufferings of their nation (Matthew Henry, Matthew 27:25), the hard language of many Christians of that time; yet the commentary also looks forward plainly to Israel's future turning to Christ (Matthew Henry, Romans 11:26). Many churches today reject any idea of a curse resting on the Jewish people, and remember the harm such ideas have done.

None of this is a reason to read Henry less; it shows how to read him. He wrote as a minister of his own day, with the knowledge of his day, and he spent himself on helping people love the Bible and live by it.

In this app

In the reader, tap a verse and a bar appears at the foot of the screen; tap Study and a sheet opens with four tabs: Original, Commentary, Cross-refs and Topics. On the Commentary tab Matthew Henry comes first. In the Gospels the Church Fathers sit beside him, and in most books Wesley too, so you can compare them at once.

Henry comments by passage, not verse by verse: a section covers seven or eight verses on average, and few cover a single verse. So the tab shows the whole section that contains your verse, under a heading such as John 3:1-21, with the chapter outline folded above it. Most books also open with a short introduction before the outline of chapter 1. Scripture inside the comments is quoted in the King James wording Henry used, and each reference is a link that opens the verse in the translation you are reading.

The Korean app shows the comment first in the Korean translation, which renders every sentence rather than summarising, with a button for the English original. It also has a page for each chapter's commentary, at addresses like /study/jhn/3/, with every section in order and the English folded under each one.

Henry's comments appear in search results under Commentary. In Settings, Offline reading can save the study data (original words, commentary, cross-references and topics) for use without a connection, and Study sources gives the credits. The name at the foot of each comment links to the text at CCEL, and wherever a question or lesson links to Matthew Henry, the link opens his comment on that verse.

Reading it well

Read the passage first. Read it slowly, ask what it says and what puzzles you, and only then open Henry: he will answer some of your questions and show you things you missed. Start with the commentary and you may end up seeing the text only through his eyes. What a Commentary Is and How to Read One gives the general principles, and How should we read the Bible? the wider question.

Find your verse within the section. Henry works through a passage in order, so what he says about your verse may come in the middle or near the end. In Psalm 23 he moves from the shepherd of verse 1 through the valley of verse 4 and the table of verse 5 to the house of the LORD in verse 6.

Keep one sentence. Henry rewards slow reading more than skimming. Take a single line, such as his advice on choosing a husband or wife, "That had need to be well done, which is to be done for life" Matthew Henry, Genesis 2:24, hold it through the day and turn it into prayer. That is the meditation the first psalm describes:

But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:2

Make the application your own. Henry always writes ‘we’, but his ‘we’ was an English congregation of the early eighteenth century. Family prayers, strict Sabbath-keeping and diligence in one's calling wear the dress of his time, so ask what his application means where you stand. The love of God's word and the fear of God beneath it do not date.

Test what you read by the text.

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true.

Acts 17:11

Henry's own comment here is that "The doctrine of Christ does not fear inquiry" Matthew Henry, Acts 17:11, and his words can bear the same scrutiny. Ask whether an application grows straight out of the text or takes a step beyond it. Where he goes beyond it, as in reading the Song of Songs as an allegory or Revelation's beast as Rome, weigh it as the reading of one age and one tradition.

Compare other voices. Read the Church Fathers in the Gospels and Wesley, who owes so much to Henry, in the Old Testament, and you will see how the same text has been read across centuries and traditions. The Cross-refs tab fills in the passages Henry touches on in passing (The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge), and the Original tab the words he hardly discusses (STEPBible's Original-Language Data).

Finally, read a whole chapter with him. Read the chapter, then his sections one after another, and the outline shows how the chapter holds together. It suits family worship or a small group: a chapter of Scripture, then one of Henry's sections read aloud. That is the setting he grew up in, and the one his commentary was written for.