Matthew Henry Bible Commentary › Introduction

Introduction

This edition presents Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible — his practical, devotional exposition of every chapter of Scripture — as a fully searchable web application on UECF.NET.

What this commentary is

Matthew Henry’s great work, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, was published in six volumes between 1708 and 1710. It is an exposition rather than a technical commentary: Henry works through the Bible chapter by chapter, opening the sense of the passage and then pressing its practical and spiritual application on the reader’s conscience. It has never gone out of use.

The full exposition runs to millions of words. The Concise Commentary — also published under the title Commentary on the Bible, Condensed — is the classic condensed form of that work, in which the substance of Henry’s exposition is carried over in his own words and phrasing but at a length that can be read alongside a chapter of Scripture in a few minutes. It is the concise text that appears here, complete: all 66 books, all 1,189 chapters.

Matthew Henry (1662–1714)

Matthew Henry was born on 18 October 1662 in Flintshire, Wales, the son of Philip Henry, a minister who had been ejected from the Church of England under the Act of Uniformity earlier that same year. He studied law at Gray’s Inn in London before turning to the ministry, and was ordained privately on 9 May 1687 by six Nonconformist ministers.

He then served a congregation in Chester for twenty-five years, from 1687 until 1712, when he moved to Mare Street, Hackney, in London. He died at Nantwich, Cheshire, on 22 June 1714, while travelling.

He did not live to finish his exposition. He had completed the Old Testament, the Gospels and Acts; after his death thirteen other Nonconformist ministers completed the final volume, Romans through Revelation, working from his notes and following his method. That is why some readers notice a change of voice in the later epistles. Later generations read him steadily: George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon both recommended the work warmly, and it has remained one of the most widely read commentaries in the English language for three centuries.

How the commentary is organised

Henry works through the Bible in its ordinary canonical order. Within each book you will usually find:

• A short introduction to the book — who wrote it, what it is about, how to read it. This appears at the top of chapter 1 and on the book’s own page.
• A chapter outline — a list of the chapter’s topics with the verses each covers, for example “The creation of light. (3–5)”. In this edition each outline entry is a link that jumps to the matching commentary.
• Commentary sections — each covering a group of verses, headed with its reference, such as Genesis 1:6–13.

A few chapters in the source have no outline, and a few books are commented on verse by verse rather than in groups. Where that is so, this edition keeps the source’s own arrangement rather than forcing it into a uniform shape. No verse mapping has been invented.

How to navigate

• Contents. The home page lists all 66 books, grouped as Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets, Gospels, Letters and Apocalyptic. Choosing a book shows its chapters and a table of contents built from the chapter outlines.
• Book and chapter pickers. The two dropdown menus in the toolbar move you anywhere in the commentary in two clicks.
• Go to a reference. Type something like John 3:16, Psalm 23 or Matt 5 into the “Go to” box and press Enter. The page opens at the commentary section that covers that verse.
• Previous and next. Every chapter has “← Previous” and “Next →” links at the top and bottom, following the commentary’s own order straight through from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. On a keyboard, [ and ] do the same.
• Cross-references. Scripture references inside the commentary text are linked to Henry’s comments on that passage, so you can follow his thought from one place to another.
• On a phone the contents open as a panel from the bottom of the screen, and a bar along the bottom gives you Contents, Previous, Search, Next and Introduction.

How to search

Press Ctrl+K (or ⌘+K), tap Search, or simply press /. The whole commentary is indexed, and the search runs in your own browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere.

The filter buttons narrow the results to Bible reference, Commentary text, a Book, or section Headings only. Each result shows the reference, the section heading, and a short excerpt with your search words highlighted.

Bookmarks, copying and sharing

• Bookmarks. The ☆ button on any chapter, or on any single commentary section, saves that place. Bookmarks are listed under the Bookmarks tab in the contents panel and are kept in your own browser between visits — they are not sent to any server, and they will not follow you to a different device or browser.
• Copy commentary. Copies the text as clean plain text, with its reference and an acknowledgement, ready to paste into notes, a sermon outline or a message.
• Copy reference copies just the reference; Copy link copies a web address that opens exactly this chapter, or exactly this section, for anyone you send it to.
• Print. The print button produces a clean printed page: the navigation, buttons and panels are all removed and only the commentary is printed.

Reading comfort

Use A− and A+ to set the size of the commentary type, and the ◙ button to switch between light and dark mode. Both choices are remembered in your browser for next time. The commentary is set in a serif face chosen for long reading; the interface around it uses a plain sans-serif so the two never compete.

A note on the text

This is a faithful transcription. The text has not been modernised, paraphrased, abridged further, or supplemented, and nothing in it is machine-generated. Henry’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century spelling, punctuation and idiom stand as they are. Where the source printing contained an obvious typographical slip in a section heading, the correction is recorded openly on the About page.

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