Barnes' Notes: Minor Prophets, vol. 2: Micah to Malachi
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Albert Barnes and James Murphy wrote this verse-by-verse commentary on Micah to Malachi. Published in the 1800s, it is still well-loved and well-read by evangelicals who appreciate Barnes' pastoral insights into the Scripture. It is not a technical work, but provides informative observations on the text, intended to be helpful to those teaching Sunday School. Today, it is ideally suited to anyone teaching or preaching the Word of God, whether a professional minister or layperson.
Top Highlights
“Micah speaks, by a rare idiom, of the righteousnesses9 of the Lord, each act of mercy being a separate effluence of His Righteousness. The very names of the places suggest the righteous acts of God, the unrighteous of Israel.” (Page 81)
“Zephaniah has, like Habakkuk, to declare the judgment on the world” (Page 225)
“‘7not from the world but from the beginning, not in the days of time, but from the days of eternity” (Page 70)
“Did ye at all fast unto Me, Me2? God emphatically rejects such fasting as their’s had been, as something, unutterably alien from Him, to Me, Me3! Yet the fasting and mourning had been real, but irreligious, like remorse for ill-deeds, which has self only for its ground. He prepares the way for His answer by correcting the error of the question. ‘4Ye fasted to yourselves, not to Me. For ye mourned your sorrows, not your misdeeds; and your public fast was undertaken, not for My glory, but out of feeling for your own grief. But nothing can be pleasing to God, which is not referred to His glory. But those things alone can be referred to His glory, which are done with righteousness and devotion.” (Page 380)
“The coming of the vision was no other than His Coming. The waiting, to which he exhorts, expresses the religious act, so often spoken of, 6of waiting for God, or His counsel, or His promised time. The sense then is wholly the same, when S.” (Page 191)
- Title: Barnes' Notes: Minor Prophets, vol. 2: Micah to Malachi
- Authors: Albert Barnes and James Murphy
- Publisher: Funk and Wagnalls
- Publication Date: 1885
- Pages: 504
Albert Barnes graduated from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, in 1820, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1823. Barnes was ordained as a Presbyterian minister by the presbytery of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1825, and was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey (1825–1830), and of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (1830–1867).
He held a prominent place in the New School branch of the Presbyterians during the Old School-New School Controversy, to which he adhered on the division of the denomination in 1837. In 1836, he had been tried (but not convicted) for heresy, mostly due to the views he expressed in Notes on Romans of the imputation of the sin of Adam, original sin and the atonement; the bitterness stirred up by this trial contributed towards widening the breach between the conservative and the progressive elements in the church. He was an eloquent preacher, but his reputation rests chiefly on his expository works, which are said to have had a larger circulation both in Europe and America than any others of their class. Of the well-known Notes on the New Testament, it is said that more than a million volumes had been issued by 1870. The Notes on Job, the Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel were also popularly distributed. The popularity of these works rested on how Barnes simplified Biblical criticism so that new developments in the field were made accessible to the general public.