Chapter 6 Matthew Henry’s Commentary in Context: Reading Ecclesiastes
Stuart Weeks
1. Introduction
When the London booksellers Thomas Parkhurst, Jonathan Robinson, and John Lawrence published Matthew Henry’s first volume of commentary on the Bible in 1707, it was under a title that very clearly indicated his intentions, and that was to be echoed in subsequent volumes: An Exposition of the Five Books of Moses: viz. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Wherein each chapter is summ’d up in its contents; the sacred text inserted at large in distinct paragraphs; each paragraph reduc’d to its proper heads; the sense given, and largely illustrated, with practical remarks and observations. The preface to this first volume (dated 2 October 1706) also provides a justification for the project, and indeed, a justification for that justification. ‘Though it is most my concern,’ writes Henry, ‘that I be able to give a good account to God and my own conscience, yet, perhaps, it will be expected, that I give the world also some account of this bold undertaking; which I shall endeavour to do with all plainness, and as one who believes, that if men must be reckoned with in the great day, for every vain and idle word they speak, much more for every vain and idle line they write’1 – an admonition that I shall do my best to follow in this short essay.
2. The Making of Matthew Henry’s Commentary
Henry claims modestly that he began this ‘bold undertaking’ not out of any sense of special qualification for the task, but because:
It has long been my practice, what little time I had to spare in my study from the constant preparations for the pulpit, to spend it in drawing up expositions upon some parts of the New Testament, not so much for my own use as purely for my entertainment, because I knew not how to employ my thoughts and time more to my satisfaction. Trahit sua quemque voluptas – Every man that studies hath some beloved study, which is his delight above any other; and this is mine.2
More immediately though, his writing was provoked by the success of William Burkitt’s Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the Four Holy Evangelists, which had been published in 1700, and the subsequent Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the Remaining Part of the New Testament, which was published in 1703, the year of Burkitt’s death.3 With the encouragement of friends, Henry undertook ‘to attempt the like upon the Old Testament’, which was apparently the limit of his ambitions at this point, although he was ultimately to extend his own commentary into the New Testament. The commentary on the Pentateuch was offered as a specimen: should it ‘find favour, and be found any way useful’, Henry declared, ‘it is my present purpose, in dependence upon divine aids, to go on, so long as God shall continue my life and health, and as my other work will permit’.4 In fact, however, his second volume (on the historical books of the Old Testament) appeared almost immediately, in 1708,5 with other volumes following in quick succession: the poetical books in 1710, the prophetical books in 1712, and, posthumously, the historical books of the New Testament (that is, the Gospels and Acts) in 1715.6
When Henry’s commentaries appeared as a single set between 1721 and 1725, under the title An Exposition of All the Books of the Old and New Testament, a further volume had been added, covering the epistles and Revelation.7 Although attributed to Henry on the title-page, this sixth volume of the set had actually been compiled by some fourteen other writers. These are not enumerated in the preface, which maintains a link to Henry by claiming that, ‘Some of the relations and hearers of that excellent person have been at the pains of transcribing the notes they took in short-hand of this part of the holy scripture, when expounded by him in his family or in the congregation’, and that these notes were used in creating the commentary.8 More information is provided by a letter written to The Protestant Dissenter’s Magazine in 1797 by one J. Evans, who reports a note left for posterity by Isaac Watts on a blank page in his own copy of the volume.9 This lists the ministers responsible for each part, and notes that:
The Reverend Mr. Matthew Henry, before his death, had made some small preparations for this last volume. The Epistle to the Romans indeed was explained so largely by his own hand, that it needed only the labour of epitomizing. Some parts of the other Epistles were done, but very imperfectly, by himself; and a few other hints had been taken in short-hand, from his public and private expositions on some of the Epistles.
An advertisement written by a different John Evans in the preface to the previous volume, on the Gospels and Acts, also touches on the state of Henry’s notes, and adds the information that the commentary on Romans, which Evans himself was to revise for press, had actually been written several years previously, and that Henry had ‘earnestly been solicited to print it by itself, before he had thoughts of writing upon the whole Bible’.10
Henry came tantalisingly close, in other words, to completing an entire commentary on the Bible by himself, but it was not obviously his intention from the outset to do so. The speed with which he managed to produce so many volumes on the Old Testament in such a short space of time (emphasized by the fact that these earlier volumes managed to go through second editions even before his death), suggests that his notes on these texts were already very substantial even before the success of Burkitt’s commentaries, only a few years previously, encouraged him to publish them. The virtual absence (or the fragmentary nature, at least) of his notes on the Epistles and Revelation stands in stark contrast, and it does appear that, with the exception of the work on Romans which he had already completed much earlier, Henry was probably not able to draw on a similar pool of notes for the New Testament at the point when he decided to extend his labours that far. We should take seriously then his initial claim to be writing a commentary on the Old Testament rather than the whole Bible, but perhaps less seriously his suggestion that this commentary simply drew on notes made for his own entertainment. It does seem likely that Henry had been planning such a commentary, possibly for a long time, and that Burkitt’s work offered an opportunity.
We should hardly be surprised to discover, therefore, either that two of Henry’s publishers, Parkhurst and Robinson, had also published Burkitt’s commentaries (in partnership with John Wyat), or that the original format used for Henry’s commentaries is almost identical to that used for Burkitt’s, with passages of Scripture followed by notes in two columns on each page. In their reference to ‘practical remarks and observations’, Henry’s commentaries also echoed the ‘practical observations’ of Burkitt’s titles. Parkhurst had, in fact, been Henry’s publisher since 169011 and, whether or not we should speak of him as having commissioned the publication of Henry’s Old Testament notes, it does seem probable that he encouraged Henry to present them in a form that complemented Burkitt’s commentaries, in order to exploit a ready market which Burkitt himself was no longer alive to supply. Of course, publication in London was by no means an easy or obvious choice for an author living in Chester, and this did, in fact, cause some problems in the years before Henry returned to the South. An ‘advertisement’ at the start of the second volume of his commentary warns that: ‘By Reason of the great Distance of the Author from the Press, several Errata’s [sic] have escaped the Corrector’s Eye, therefore he depends upon the Reader’s Candour to Excuse them, and his Judgment to Correct ’em’. It did also mean, however, that Henry was able to reach a far larger readership, and publication in London undoubtedly contributed to the success of his work, which eventually came, of course, to overshadow that of Burkitt.
Although Henry’s commentaries were certainly well received, their success was probably not breathtakingly rapid, at least in commercial terms. Matters are confused slightly by the way in which the first six-volume set of the commentaries, published in 1721–25, describes itself as ‘The Third Edition’, apparently taking account of the fact that individual volumes had run into second editions whilst still technically separate works, but a further ‘fourth edition’ (in five volumes) only appeared a dozen years later, in 1737–38, and two rival ‘fifth’ editions some years later still (one in Edinburgh between 1757 and 1760, the other in London from 1761 to 1763). This probably represents a solid rather than a spectacular success in publishing terms, although the commentaries were already highly esteemed, at least in some quarters, within a few decades. Writing about the 1730s and the life of the early Methodist George Whitfield, David Bogue and James Bennett report that:
Matthew Henry’s commentary on the Scriptures was the book from which he derived that knowledge of scriptural theology, that serious evangelical train of thinking, and that simple popular mode of instruction for which he afterwards became so deservedly renowned. He is said to have studied this book literally on his knees, to have read it through four times, and, to the end of his life, to have spoken of the author with the most profound veneration, ever calling him the great Mr. Henry.12
They add, a little snidely:
Had Mr Wesley’s prejudices allowed him to study the works of this dissenter … how much benefit might he have derived to his own religion, and how happily might it have influenced the principles of the communion which he formed out of the establishment!13
What marks Henry’s work out, however, is not so much its swift popularity as its great longevity. We do not have precise figures for sales, of course, but it is clear that people continued to buy the commentary long after one might have expected interest in it to fade, with many editions continuing to appear throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even as late as 1875, in a famous and influential essay on commentaries, Charles Spurgeon commends Matthew Henry as ‘the man whose name is a household word’, and describes with approval seeing a copy ‘in the old meeting-house at Chester – chained in the vestry for anybody and everybody to read’. Indeed, Spurgeon declares that ‘Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully through once at least’,14 something that he urged on his own son, Charlie, in a later letter: ‘Read Matthew Henry right through, if you can, before you are married’.15 It would be hard to say how many ministers have actually accomplished that task; the first six-volume edition contains very nearly 4,000 pages in total, and this edition retained the small type and two-column format of the volumes published individually, so there is not a lot of space wasted in those pages. Henry himself, moreover, certainly did not produce the commentaries in the expectation that they would be read that way, and he cannot have expected that they would be read for so long; these books, after all, were produced to meet quite a specific need.
3. Henry’s Exposition among Bible Commentaries
Despite the tremendous popular interest in Scripture, and the sheer amount of preaching on the Bible in Britain and other Protestant countries in the seventeenth century, access to biblical commentaries would not have been straightforward for most people. To be sure, commentaries were increasingly being published in English rather than Latin, but most of these were on individual books, and varied wildly both in their opinions and in their quality, so that a substantial library collection and a considerable amount of time would have been required by anyone seeking regular and reliable guidance in the interpretation of Scripture. At a serious scholarly level though, consolidation was in fact being achieved quite swiftly. In 1660, John Pearson and others brought out the famous Critici Sacri, published in London in nine volumes by Cornelius Bee, who had initiated the project.16 This assembled the best known Latin commentaries on each book of the Bible, as a counterpart to Walton’s Polyglot which had itself appeared in 1654–57.17 Around the same time, between 1655 and 1660, Jean de La Haye (Joannes Gagnaeus) published in Paris his extraordinary, nineteen-volume Biblia Maxima Versionum,18 a successor to his shorter Biblia Magna Commentariorum Literalium of 1643.19 The Biblia Magna, like the Critici Sacri, had simply collected commentaries together, but the Biblia Maxima provided technical linguistic explanations and lists of variant readings, as well as annotations derived from and attributed to earlier commentators, creating a formidable, if rather unwieldy, resource for scholars.20 The Critici Sacri itself enjoyed an international reputation and was re-published in Germany at the end of the century, with a wholly new expanded version appearing around the same time, published in Amsterdam by a group of Dutch publishers.21
Even before that though, an attempt was made in England to create something more manageable than these huge works, when Matthew Poole (with the assistance of others) published his Synopsis Criticorum between 1669 and 1676.22 Publication was initially delayed by the protests of Cornelius Bee, who felt that it invaded the copyright of his Critici Sacri, but who eventually became one of the publishers himself of the new work.23 Poole’s book synthesized a new Latin commentary from the work of earlier commentators, with attributions to his sources in marginal notes. Although it still spanned four volumes (bound as five), it was considerably easier to use than the Critici Sacri. It achieved similar international recognition, however, and a number of editions were published in Germany and Holland. By the end of the century, therefore, those who wished to undertake serious scholarly interpretation of the Bible were blessed not only with an extraordinary range of resources, but with a number of books that assembled and consolidated the insights of previous generations in a reasonably straightforward form. Furthermore, for those who could tolerate a little Roman Catholicism, there was even excellent access to patristic and medieval interpretations of most of the biblical books to be found in the commentaries of Cornelius à Lapide (Cornelis Cornelissen van den Steen). These had appeared throughout the sixteenth century, mostly as posthumous editions of à Lapide’s notes, and subsequently rivalled even Henry’s commentary for longevity.
None of this would have been of much use, however, to those very many potential students of the Bible who, as Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare, had ‘small Latin and less Greek’, or even to those whose Latin might have been adequate, but who had no desire either to engage constantly with the technical intricacies of the text or to adjudicate for themselves between the many different opinions and interpretations presented in such works. For such readers, there were far fewer resources that brought together interpretations of the Bible and that they could regard as consistent and reliable. Indeed, there was no single commentary on the whole Bible in English before 1643, when Nicholas Fussell published in London a translation of Giovanni Diodati’s Pious Annotations, upon the Holy Bible, which had originally been published in Italian in 1607.24 This work offered prefaces with absurdly complicated, diagrammatic representations of each book (very much in the fashion of the day), followed by notes that paraphrased or explained particular expressions, generally without reference to the original text. In Italian, the principal significance of Diodati’s work had been as a translation rather than as a commentary, and the fact that his annotations went very rapidly through several English editions may say more about the thirst for commentary in English than about the quality of the annotations themselves.
Two other works, both written in English from the outset, were to follow rapidly, although neither seems originally to have been designed as a commentary on the Bible. Between 1646 and 1662, John Trapp published a series of commentaries (beginning with one on the Gospel of John) that gradually covered the New Testament and then the Old. These did not portray themselves individually as components of a larger project, and although they culminated in 1662 with Annotations upon the Old and New Testament, in five distinct volumes, which was a sort of omnibus edition, they were not described as A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments until they were re-published much later in the mid-nineteenth century.25 The collected edition of 1662 is not especially common, and was apparently not reprinted before the nineteenth century. There is nothing, therefore, to suggest that it achieved any great success, perhaps because of the many (often polemical) references to contemporary circumstances which characterize Trapp’s commentaries. Spurgeon, who enjoyed Trapp’s wit, humour, and provocativeness, memorably described them as ‘salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and all the other condiments’, but remarked also that ‘some of his remarks are far-fetched, and like the far-fetched rarities of Solomon’s Tarshish, there is much gold and silver, but there are also apes and peacocks’.26 It may be the very things that Spurgeon enjoyed which made it difficult for Trapp to consolidate his position among contemporaries. John Mayer’s commentaries, published individually between 1631 and 1653, were also reconfigured as commentaries upon the Old Testament and upon the whole Bible, but seem never to have been reprinted.27 Spurgeon again offers a helpful characterization, saying that the volumes ‘are a most judicious and able digest of former commentators, enriched with the author’s own notes, forming altogether one of the fullest and best of learned commentaries; not meant for popular use, but invaluable to the student’.28 Nonetheless, he observes also that Mayer is ‘a very Alp of learning, but cold and lacking in spirituality, hence his lack of popularity’, and it seems likely that Mayer’s contemporaries agreed with this assessment.
The only other direct rivals for Matthew Henry’s readership were rather different in character. The Annotations upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament (otherwise more commonly known as ‘The Assembly’s Annotations’) was closely associated with the Westminster Assembly, convened by Parliament in 1643 to re-structure the Church of England, although the work itself was not published until 1645.29 The original intention was simply to provide marginal notes to the biblical text, but many of the contributors wrote at greater length and the format was changed late in the day. As a result, the comments vary greatly in length and quality. This inconsistency was addressed to some extent in the subsequent editions of 1651 and 1657, but the work remained unsatisfactory and probably not a good investment for most readers. A rather similar work was provided in 1657 when the well-known annotations to the Dutch ‘Statenvertaling’ Bible, originally published twenty years previously, appeared in an English translation.30 These are more consistent, but the comments are generally brief and often rather slight. A more direct competitor was the Annotations upon the Holy Bible, started by the same Matthew Poole who had created the Synopsis Criticorum and completed by others after his death in 1679.31 This commentary, somewhat more succinct than Henry’s, was highly regarded, not least because of Poole’s academic credentials. These are not widely on display in the book itself, which concentrates on the lucid exposition of particular passages and phrases without detailed technical discussion. Nonetheless, Henry is careful from the outset to distinguish his own work from Poole’s, and declares that he is attempting to avoid duplication of it:
Mr. Pool’s English Annotations (which, having had so many impressions, we may suppose, have got into most hands) are of admirable use, especially for the explaining of scripture-phrases, opening the sense, referring to parallel scriptures, and the clearing of difficulties that occur. I have therefore all along been brief upon that which is there most largely discussed, and have industriously declined, as much as I could, what is to be found there; for I would not actum agere – do what is done; nor (if I may be allowed to borrow the apostle’s words) boast of things made ready to our hand.32
Henry claims his own concern is to provide something less focused upon the small components of the text, and more upon its broader sense. Still referring to Poole, he avers that:
These and other annotations which are referred to the particular words and clauses they are designed to explain are most easy to be consulted upon occasion; but the exposition which (like this) is put into a continued discourse, digested under proper heads, is much more easy and ready to be read through for one’s own or others’ instruction. And, I think, the observing of the connection of each chapter (if there be occasion) with that which goes before, and the general scope of it, with the thread of the history or discourse, and the collecting of the several parts of it, to be seen at one view, will contribute very much to the understanding of it, and will give the mind abundant satisfaction in the general intention, though there may be here and there a difficult word or expression which the best critics cannot easily account for. This, therefore, I have here attempted.33
Finally, he also has a little more to say about his own exegetical intentions, through a contrast this time with Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum rather than his Annotations:
That which I aim at in the exposition is to give what I thought the genuine sense, and to make it as plain as I could to ordinary capacities, not troubling my readers with the different sentiments of expositors, which would have been to transcribe Mr. Pool’s Latin Synopsis, where this is done abundantly to our satisfaction and advantage. As to the practical observations, I have not obliged myself to raise doctrines out of every verse or paragraph, but only have endeavoured to mix with the exposition such hints or remarks as I thought profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, aiming in all to promote practical godliness, and carefully avoiding matters of doubtful disputation and strifes of words.34
To put this plainly, Matthew Henry apparently sees the place of his own commentary as rather different both from that of the hardcore scholarship represented by the Synopsis Criticorum, and from that of the more accessible but atomistic style of commentary represented by Poole’s Annotations. Although we might well question today the deliberate attempt that he makes to minimize for his readers the many disagreements to be found between existing commentators, it is not difficult to see why there might have been a market for just such a commentary at that time, or why Henry and his publisher might have been keen to pursue that market on the coat-tails of Burkitt’s work. It is less obvious, though, why a work so clearly calculated to fill a particular niche in its own day should have found such continuing success for at least the next two centuries.
4. Henry’s Enduring Value: Ecclesiastes as a Case Study
I cannot claim to have read all Henry’s commentaries through even once, let alone four times like George Whitfield, but I have worked with his commentary on Ecclesiastes, on which I am writing a commentary myself. Therefore, I shall finish by fulfilling the promise of my title and saying a little about the continuing value, or otherwise, of that work from the perspective of someone who is definitely not a member of Henry’s target audience. This commentary formed part of his third volume, first published in 1710 and dealing with the ‘the five poetical books’: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Comparing these with the pentateuchal and historical books covered in the earlier volumes, Henry remarks on the first page of his preface that:
The books of scripture have hitherto been, for the most part, very plain and easy, narratives of matter of fact, … The waters of the sanctuary have hitherto been but to the ankles or to the knees, such as a lamb might wade in, to drink of and wash in; but here we are advanced to a higher form in God’s school, and have books put into our hands wherein are many things dark and hard to be understood, … The waters of the sanctuary are here to the loins, and still as we go forward we shall find the waters still risen in the prophetical books, waters to swim in …, not fordable, nor otherwise to be passed over.35
Observing that there is a similar progression in the New Testament, he urges readers to start at the beginning and to consolidate the basics before they move on: ‘Those that begin their Bible at the wrong end commonly use their knowledge of it in the wrong way’.36
The preface proceeds, though, to a more historical account of the hagiographa, filled with references to other authors, ancient and modern. As it moves on to discuss the history of poetry, many Greek expressions and classical references are thrown in, before Henry returns to a more straightforward commendation of the texts and expressions of regret at his own inability either to convey all that is in those texts or to meet his own standards of fullness and exactness. Before promising a further volume on the Prophets, he cites Erasmus at length in Latin. It comes as something of a surprise then, to discover that these very visible marks of erudition are almost entirely absent from the commentary on the text, and indeed, from the introduction to Ecclesiastes itself – until one appreciates that all the important things that Henry had to say in his preface were said in English. He has established his credentials in a conventional way, without concealing anything vital from less well-educated readers.
Indeed, in the course of the commentary itself, it is difficult to judge just how much reading or learning underpins the interpretation. Hebrew is cited only once, in a discussion of the protagonist’s name in the commentary on 1:1–3, and there most of the ideas are drawn from other commentators (although I have found no source for Henry’s suggestion that the form of the name may be feminine because Solomon intended ‘to upbraid himself with his effeminacy, … for it was to please his wives that he set up idols’).37 The Aramaic Targum and Saint Jerome’s commentary are each mentioned on a few occasions, although with no indication that they have been employed throughout, and the Masoretes are mentioned once, in a note on 12:13.38 Where Henry wants to mention other viewpoints, he usually says things like ‘So some understand the last clause’, or occasionally contrasts the views of ‘some’ with those of ‘others’. The only contemporary commentators to be named are Edward Reynolds (who had written the notes on Ecclesiastes anonymously in the Assembly’s Annotations, but who was named in a subsequent, separate publication of those notes)39 and William Pemble (who had written a short commentary in 1627, subsequently reprinted in several collections of his works).40 These two are named perhaps because Henry quotes them directly: both scholars in his discussion of 3:11, and Reynolds alone at 3:18–21.41 In general, one is left with a sense that Henry has not worked consistently through the original text or the technical commentaries, but that he has reached for the bookshelf to deal with particular difficulties.
Nevertheless, his interpretation of Ecclesiastes would at the time have been a very conventional one: the book is a penitential sermon by a repentant Solomon, who draws on his own errors and experiences to condemn the vanity of worldly possessions and desires. The point of the book, as he puts it in his introduction, is to show that ‘our happiness consists not in being as gods to ourselves, to have what we will and do what we will, but in having him that made us to be a God to us’.42 That interpretation is not generally pursued by modern commentators, and requires us both to read in ideas from elsewhere and to ignore a certain amount of what the book itself says, perhaps most notably its explicit insistence that there is nothing beyond this life to offset the vanity of the world. When the text warns in 11:8, for instance, that even a man who has lived many years and enjoyed them all should ‘remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity’, Henry is accordingly at pains to stress that the days of coming death may be many but they are not infinite, and he has nothing at all to say about the claim that ‘All that cometh is vanity’.43
Earlier, dealing with the book’s perceptions of injustice in Chapter 8, he even derives a doctrine of immortality from its words:
God would not have allotted so much of this world’s wealth to his worst enemies and so much of its troubles to his best friends; there must therefore be another life after this the joys and griefs of which must be real and substantial, and able to make men truly happy or truly miserable, for this world does neither.44
There are hermeneutical issues at stake here, and we should not censure Henry too harshly for reading his text in the light of his beliefs, but this is, of course, a policy that leaves little scope for any radical unorthodoxy.
Where doctrine is not at stake, Henry is less constrained, and his commentary on 10:4–11 consists largely of an essay on the proper relationship between rulers and their people, urging respect and temperance in the dealings of each with the other. This is an interpretation that seems more rooted in contemporary political thinking or sensitivities than in the text, where it has almost no basis, and that comes close to being allegorical at points. It suits though many of his comments on 8:2–5 also, which stress the need for observance of laws and include the advice that ‘We must not be forward to find fault with the public administration’.45 This is perhaps one aspect of Henry’s ‘practical’ exposition, which is not always exposition so much as an alignment of the text with his beliefs about the world and the ways in which we should live. These beliefs are sometimes a little surprising. When the protagonist of Ecclesiastes declares in Chapter 7, for instance, that he has found no woman (which has traditionally been understood as a claim that he ‘found no woman good’), modern commentators have often been inclined to see misogyny. Henry, however, ascribes the sentiment to Solomon’s own experiences, and remarks:
Doubtless this is not intended as a censure of the female sex in general; it is probable that there have been and are more good women than good men.46
While by no means a statement of radical feminism, both the sentiment and his resistance to the text stand out.
Henry’s prose is often compelling, and he is arguably more gifted as a writer than as an exegete, but it is such personal touches that seem in the end to give the work a special quality, as one is drawn into the worldview of a man whose piety becomes unobjectionable, even to the least pious of us, because it is a facet of his reasonable and generous humanity. Even when it was written, it seems unlikely that this commentary would have offered any significant new insights into Ecclesiastes, and it would be hard to say that it is, in any sense, a work of great scholarship. It is a curiously reassuring and companionable book, however, and that is surely the secret of its success. The biblical text is presented neither as a puzzle nor as a burden to constrain us, but as something which, with ‘the great Mr. Henry’ beside us, we can use to bring the world into better focus.
1. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707).
2. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707). The Latin is a quotation from Vergil, Ecl. 2.65, and might be translated loosely as ‘each goes where their fancy takes them’.
3. William Burkitt, Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the Four Holy Evangelists (London: T. Parkhurst, J. Robinson, and J. Wyat, 1700); William Burkitt, Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the Remaining Part of the New Testament (London: T. Parkhurst, J. Robinson, and J. Wyat, 1703).
4. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707).
5. The date is commonly given as 1717, but this is an error, probably stemming from the cataloguing of a copy in the Cambridge University Library. This copy has a date MDCCVII on the title-page, which would be 1707, but one or more characters have been deleted manually at the end of the date, and the preface to the volume is dated 2 June 1708, making 1707 impossible. It seems likely that the date was first misprinted, then rendered inaccurate by a correction, and finally misread by a librarian. Photographs of this copy are cited for the English Short Title Catalogue entry T190370, which gives the false date; T188952 gives the correct one.
6. All the volumes have a subtitle similar to the first (see above). See further, Philip Alexander’s contribution to the present volume.
7. For the publication details of this and subsequent editions, see Stuart Weeks, The Making of Many Books: Printed Works on Ecclesiastes 1523–1875 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 85–86. Also P. Alexander in the present volume.
8. Preface to Exposition vol. 6 (1721).
9. The Protestant Dissenter’s Magazine 4 (1797): 472. The magazine was published by Thomas Knott in London. See further, J.B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life, Character, and Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry (London: B.J. Holdsworth, 1828), 308.
10. From Evans’ appendix to the preface to Exposition vol. 5 (1715), cited in full in P. Alexander’s contribution to the present volume.
11. He published Henry’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature of Schism; or A Persuasive to Christian Love and Charity in that year (‘London, Printed for Tho. Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns, in Cheapside, near Mercers Chapel. 1690’).
12. David Bogue and James Bennett, History of Dissenters from the Revolution in 1688, to the Year 1808, 4 vols. (London: n.p., 1808–12), 3:17–18.
13. Bogue and Bennett, History of Dissenters, 3:18.
14. C.H. Spurgeon, Commenting & Commentaries: Two Lectures addressed to the Students of The Pastor’s College, Metropolitan Tabernacle, together with a Catalogue of Biblical Commentaries and Expositions (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876), 2–4 (esp. 3).
15. C.H. Spurgeon, The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon: Compiled from his Diary, Letters, and Records by his Wife and his Private Secretary: Vol. III 1856–1878, eds. Susannah Spurgeon and Joseph Harrald (Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings, 1899), 296.
16. John Pearson et al., eds., Critici Sacri sive Doctissimorum Virorum in Sacra Biblia Annotationes & Tractatus. Opus summâ curâ recognitum & in novem Tomos divisum, 9 vols. (London: Cornelius Bee et al.; Oxford: Thomas Robinson; Cambridge: William Morden, 1660).
17. Brian Walton, ed., Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, 6 vols. (London: Thomas Roycroft, 1654–57).
18. Jean de La Haye (Joannes Gagnaeus), Biblia Maxima Versionum, ex linguis orientalibus: pluribus sacris ms. codicibus: innumeris fere SS. & veteribus Patribus, & Interpretibus orthodoxis, collectarum. Earumque Concordia cum Vulgata, et eius expositione litterali cum annotationibus, 19 vols. (Paris: Denis Béchet & Louis Billaine, Antoine Bertier, and Simeon Piget, 1655–60).
19. Jean de La Haye (Joannes Gagnaeus), Biblia Magna Commentariorum Literalium, 5 vols. (Paris: Michel Soly et al., 1643).
20. For more details, see Weeks, Making of Many Books, 62–63.
21. The German edition has a slightly different title: Critici sacri: Sive Clarissimorum Virorum In Sacro-Sancta Utriusque Foederis Biblia, Doctissimae Annotationes Atque Tractatus Theologico-Philologici, 7 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Balthasar Christoph Wust (père), Johann Philipp Andreae & Johann Nikolaus Andreae, 1695–1701). The Dutch publication is: Critici sacri, sive Annotata doctissimorum virorum in Vetus ac Novum Testamentum. Quibus accedunt Tractatus Varii Theologicophilologici, 9 vols. (Amsterdam: Hendrick Boom et al., 1698). A supplement to the German edition, including new materials from the Dutch, was published in 1700–1701 by Johann Philipp Andreae and Johann Nikolaus Andreae.
22. Matthew Poole, ed., Synopsis criticorum aliorumque S. Scripturae interpretum, 5 vols. (London: J. Flesher et al., 1669–76).
23. See Weeks, Making of Many Books, 67.
24. Giovanni Diodati, Pious Annotations, upon the Holy Bible: Expounding the difficult places thereof Learnedly, and Plainly: With other things of great importance (London: Nicholas Fussell, 1643). Translation of: Giovanni Diodati, La Bibbia: cioè i libri del Vecchio, e del Nuovo Testamento. Nuovamente traslatati in lingua Italiana (Geneva: Jean de Tournes, 1607).
25. John Trapp, Annotations upon the Old and New Testament, in five distinct volumes, 5 vols. (London: Robert White, 1662); John Trapp, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, 5 vols., ed. Hugh Martin (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1867–68). On the question of Trapp’s intentions, see Weeks, Making of Many Books, 56–57.
26. Spurgeon, Commenting & Commentaries, 7.
27. See Weeks, Making of Many Books, 58–59.
28. Spurgeon, Commenting & Commentaries, 11.
29. John Downame et al., Annotations upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament; Wherein the Text is Explained, Doubts Resolved, Scriptures Parallelled, and Various Readings Observed. By The Joynt-Labour of certain Learned Divines, thereunto appointed, and therein employed, as is expressed in the Preface (London: John Legatt and John Raworth, 1645).
30. Theodore Haak, The Dutch Annotations upon the whole Bible: Or, all the Holy Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, together With, and according to their own Translation of all the Text: As both the one and the other were ordered and appointed by the Synod of Dort, 1618, and published by Authority, 1637. Now faithfully communicated to the use of Great Britain, in English. Whereunto is prefixed an exact Narrative touching the whole Work, and this Translation, 2 vols. (London: John Rothwell, Joshua Kirton, and Richard Tomlins, 1657).
31. Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible. Wherein the Sacred Text is Inserted, and various Readings Annex’d, together with the Parallel Scriptures, the more difficult Terms in each Verse are Explained, seeming Contradictions Reconciled, Questions and Doubts Resolved, and the whole Text opened, 2 vols. (London: Thomas Parkhurst et al., 1683–85). See Weeks, Making of Many Books, 72–73.
32. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707).
33. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707).
34. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 1 (1707).
35. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 3 (1710).
36. Henry, preface to Exposition vol. 3 (1710).
37. Henry on Eccl 1:1–3.
38. Henry remarks that ‘the Masorites begin it with a capital letter’ (Henry on Eccl 12:13–14), by which he is referring to the enlarged samekh that starts the first word of the text in many manuscripts and printed editions (although not in the earliest manuscripts, on which modern editions are based).
39. Edward Reynolds, Annotations on the Book of Ecclesiastes (London: John Streater, 1669).
40. William Pemble, Salomons Recantation and Repentance: or, The Booke of Ecclesiastes briefly and fully explained (London: John Bartlet, 1627). On the re-printings, see Weeks, Making of Many Books, 40.
41. Henry on Eccl 3:11–15 and 3:16–22.
42. Henry on Ecclesiastes.
43. Henry on Eccl 11:7–10.
44. Henry on Eccl 8:14–17.
45. Henry on Eccl 8:1–5.
46. Henry on Eccl 7:23–29.