Bible Commentaries

Genesis 1:14 — And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: Genesis 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. Ver. 14,15. Let there be light. — The sun, moon, and stars, are, as it were, certain vessels, whereinto the Lord did gather the light, which

Genesis 46:29 — friends by), believe not one word he says; my father is but a poor baker; whom this knave would make a lord, to curry favour with me, and make you believe I am a great man born. Peacham’s Complete Gentleman, p. 5. See Trapp on " Genesis 22:10 " And he fell on his neck, and wept, … — For exceeding joy. What then shall be the meeting of saints in heaven! Christ shall say, "Come, ye blessed of my Father." As if he should say, Where have ye been all this while, my

Job 35:10 — speaks of God in the plural number only for honour’s sake. They call not upon God as their Creator, they praise him not as their preserver and benefactor, saith Elihu in this and the next verse; but express a great deal of pride and vanity, Job 35:12-13 ; and thence it is that their prayers are unanswered and themselves unrelieved. The oppressed should not only make moan and fill the air, vagis clamoribus, with brutish outcries (the fruit of the flesh for ease, rather than of the spirit for grace),

Job 4:12 — that none are afflicted but those that have well deserved it; since the best are defective and blame worthy, though they should be puriores caelo afflictione facti, as Chrysostom saith, as those good souls were that prayed Peter out of prison, Acts 12:5 . Some are of the opinion, that this vision either came from his phantasy, and so was none; or else, by an illusion from Satan. But Mercer holds it to have been a true vision from God; although Eliphaz abused it in his misapplication thereof to Job,

Job 42:7 — supplicii saris est patri, A little punishment is enough to a loving father for a great fault (Terent.). "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith the Lord, … for (alas) they have received of my hand double for all their sins," Isaiah 40:1-2 . So it seemed to him who is all heart, and who in all their afflictions is equally afflicted. God weeps on his people’s necks tears of compassion; they weep at God’s feet tears of compunction. Oh beautiful contention! The Lord said to

Job 7:20 — than this, what can I do unto thee? δυνησομαι πραξαι , as the Septuagint render this text. O thou preserver of men? — Of all men, but especially of them that believe, 1 Timothy 4:10 . The Grecians called their Jupiter ελευθεριος , the deliverer or preserver of their persons; and again, ερκειος , from ερκος

Psalms 15:4 — Mordecai’s slighting of him, Esther 3:2 (Josephus). Be he as great as Antiochus Epiphanes, to whom the Samaritans, excusing themselves that they were no Jews, wrote thus, To Antiochus, the great god. Daniel counted and called him a vile person, Daniel 11:21 . So Elisha despised Jehoram the king, 2 Kings 3:14 ; we also must despise the wicked; yet non virum, sed vitium, et salvo cuique loci sui honore, giving honour, befitting their places, to whom honour is due, Romans 13:7 ., but shunning that partiality

Proverbs 28:13 — is a deformity that must be uncovered, or God will never cover it: see it we must to confession, or see it we shall to our confusion. If Job had covered his transgression as Adam - or "after the manner of men" - he had undone himself. Job 31:33 It is the manner of men - and they have it from Adam - to palliate their sins and plead for them, to elevate and extenuate them, to mince and excuse them. Sin and shifting came into the world together. Sin and Satan are alike in this, they cannot

Ecclesiastes 11:1 — now esp. of Irish manufacture. to the friar minors to clothe them, they returned the same with this message, that he ought not to give alms of what he had rent from the poor, neither would they accept of that abominable gift. Daniel’s Hist. , 168. The Hebrew word signifying alms signifies properly justice, to intimate that the matter of our alms should be goods justly gotten. öã÷ä . - Buxtorf. Hence also the Jews call their alms box Kuphashel tsedaka, the chest of justice.

Hosea 1:11 — Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together — i.e. they shall unite into one body, and one religion, and shall all make one entire kingdom, Ezekiel 37:22 ; Ezekiel 37:24 . Christ once lifted up, shall draw all things to himself, John 12:32: and wherever this carcase is, there will the spiritual eagles be also, Matthew 24:28 . Caiaphas, like another Balaam, prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation: and not for that nation only, but that also he "should gather together

Hosea 12:8 — εμαυτω ), in opposition haply to the airy notions (as he accounted them) of the prophet’s invectives against his covetous practices, and the terrors of his own conscience, which he endeavoured to corrupt and bribe. See, to like purpose, Isaiah 57:10 , "Thou hast found the life of thy hand," that is, a livelihood by thy labour; "therefore thou wast not grieved": thy heart is hardened, and thou art insensible of thy sin guiltiness; thou settest the gain against the guilt, and

Hosea 14:4 — I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. I will heal their backslidings — Relapses, we know, are dangerous, and apostasy little less than incurable, 2 Peter 2:20-21 Hebrews 6:6 . Bishop Latimer, in a sermon before King Edward VI, tells of one notorious backslider that repented; but beware of this sin, saith he, for I have known no more but one that did so. To fall forward is nothing so dangerous as to fall backward,

Hosea 6:10 — the house of Israel — Now a very den of thieves, as Hosea 6:9 , a pantheon of all sorts of idols, a chamber of imagery, an Egyptian temple, gay and goodly without, but within an ox or calf, with "women weeping for Tammuz," Ezekiel 8:12 ; Ezekiel 8:14 , that is, for Osiris, king of Egypt, whose image (under the shape of an ox) his wife, Isis, had advanced to be idolatrously there adored. This kind of abomination Jeroboam had learned in Egypt (whither he fled from Solomon, his master),

Amos 4:10 — — That evil angel, Psalms 78:49 , that το θειον , eminent hand of God, as Hippocrates calleth it; that destruction that walketh in darkness and wasteth at noon day, as the Psalmist styleth it, Psalms 91:6 . This God sent; for it is a messenger of his sending, an arrow of his shooting, 2 Samuel 24:15 , and may better be called morbus sacer than the falling sickness; as being an extraordinary hand of God, such as was that Sudor Anglicus, in the days

Micah 7:3 — scabunt, one hand scratches another; and between the oppressive prince and unconscionable judge "the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth," Habakkuk 1:4 . And the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire — Heb. he speaketh out the corruption of his soul. "He" doth it. Emphaticum est pronomen Ipse, saith Calvin. This same "he" hath a special emphasis in it, q.d. This

Zechariah 3:7 — courts, and I will give thee places to walk among these that stand by. If thou wilt walk in my ways, and keep my charge — That is, if thou wilt walk in all the commandments (moral) and ordinances (Levitical) blameless, as holy Zacharias did, Luke 1:6 , and so approve thyself righteous before God, by taking heed to thyself first, and then to all thy flock, which is thy charge, the Holy Ghost’s depositum, and the purchase of Christ’s own blood, Acts 20:28 . Godliness is the highway to

Malachi 2:10 — ¿No tenemos todos un padre? ¿No nos ha creado un solo Dios? ¿Por qué traicionamos cada uno contra su hermano, profanando el pacto de nuestros padres? Ver. 10. ¿No tenemos todos un padre? ] Aquí comienza una segunda impugnación, a saber. con el pueblo (como el primero con los sacerdotes), por su maldad; donde tenemos tantas palabras, tantos argumentos. In brevitate verborum est luxuries rerum. Si la falta

Matthew 5:22 — del infierno. Pero el juicio, el consejo y el Gehena, no noten aquí diferentes castigos, sino sólo varios grados de condenación del infierno, que es la paga justa del menor pecado. Hay una ira legítima, como la de nuestro Salvador, Marco 3:5 ; Mateo 16:22 . Y se nos ordena "enojarnos y no pecar", Efesios 4:26 ; Daniel 3:19 . Ahora bien, el que quiere estar enojado y no pecar debe (en realidad) enojarse sólo por el pecado, y eso no es tanto una ofensa para nosotros como una ofensa para Dios. Luego,

2 Corinthians 7:11 — to God, so upon true repentance he helpeth us to make apology for ourselves; not by denying our sins or defending them, but by confessing and disclaiming them, as a child to his father. Yea, what indignation — Or stomach, as Ephraim, Jeremiah 31:19 . The publican who smote himself upon the breast, he would have knocked his corruptions, if he could have come at them, as those, Isaiah 30:22 , that polluted the idols that they had perfumed, and said unto them, Get you hence, be packing. "What

2 Samuel 11:2 — his, - those, otherwise, windows of wickedness, and loopholes of lust, the eyes; through which the old serpent easily windeth himself into the heart, and maketh himseff master of the whole man. This made good Job to step from a prayer to a vow. Job 31:1 Yea, from a vow to an imprecation, Job 31:7 as knowing the danger of irregular glancing, or inordinate gazing. Those who abuse the outward eye, are worthy to have the inward eye darkened, saith Gregory. David’s eye became an inlet of lust into