Matthew Henry

“ Hi si pro vitreis suis thesauris adeò decertarunt, quid nos pro genuinis nostris, à Deo inspiratis?—If they had such a value for these counterfeits, how precious should the true treasure of the divine oracles be to us! Of these we come next to speak.
Prophecy, we are sure, was of equal date with the church; for faith comes, not by thinking and seeing, as philosophy does, but by hearing, by hearing the word of God, Rom. ”

“ The Jews' mocking the messengers of the Lord, killing the prophets, and stoning those that were sent unto them, was as amazing unaccountable an instance of the enmity that is in the carnal mind against God as any that can be produced. And this makes their rejection of Christ's gospel the less strange, that the Spirit of prophecy, which, for many ages, was so much the glory of Israel, in every age met with so much opposition, and there were those that always resisted the Holy Ghost in the prophets, and turned that glory into shame, Acts vii. ”

“ God did not make use of idiots or fools to reveal his will by, but such whose intellects were entire and perfect; and he imprinted such a clear copy of his truth upon them as that it became their own sense, being digested fully into their understandings, so that they were able to deliver and represent it to others as truly as any can paint forth his own thoughts. ”

“ We cannot conceive that heathen women, and those actuated by dæmons, should speak more clearly and fully of the Messiah than those holy men did who, we are sure, were moved by the Holy Ghost, nor that the Gentiles should be entrusted with larger and earlier discoveries of the great salvation than that people of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ was to come. But enough, if not more than enough, of the pretenders to prophecy. ”

“ And therefore the Jews reckon all prophecy to be given by the highest degree of inspiration, except that which was peculiar to Moses. When our Saviour asked the chief priests whether John's baptism were from heaven or of men, they durst not say Of men, because the people counted him a prophet, and, if so, then not of men. The Hebrew name for a prophet is nby'— a speaker, preacher, or orator, a messenger, or interpreter, that delivers God's messages to the children of men, as a herald to proclaim war or an ambassador to treat of peace. ”

“ In the succeeding reigns, both of Judah and Israel, we frequently meet with prophets sent on particular errands to Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Asa, and other kings, who, it is probable, instructed the people in the things of God at other times, though it is not recorded. But, prophecy growing into contempt with many, God revived the honour of it, and put a new lustre upon it, in the power given to Elijah and Elisha to work miracles, and the great things that God did by them for the confirming of the people's faith in it, and the awakening of their regard to it, 2 Kings ii. ”

“ In Samuel's time, and by him, the schools of the prophets were erected, by which prophecy was dignified and provision made for a succession of prophets; for it should seem that in those colleges, hopeful young men were bred up in devotion, in a constant attendance upon the instruction the prophets gave from God, and under a strict discipline, as candidates, or probationers, for prophecy, who were called the sons of the prophets ”

“ Lycurgus and Numa, those two great lawgivers of the Spartan and Roman commonwealths, brought their people to an observance of their laws by possessing them with a notion that they had them by divine revelation, and so making it a point of religion to observe them. ”

“ In the antediluvian period Adam received divine revelation in the promise of the Seed of the woman, and no doubt communicated it in the name of the Lord, to his seed, and was prophet, as well as priest, to his numerous family. Enoch was a prophet, and foretold perhaps the deluge, certainly the last judgment, that of the great day. Behold the Lord comes, Jude 14. When men began, as a church, to call upon the name of the Lord (Gen. iv. 26) , or to call themselves by his name, they were blessed with prophets, for the prophecy came in old time (2 Pet. i. 21) ; it is venerable for its antiquity. ”

“ Some there were that trembled at the word of God in their mouths, but by the most they were ridiculed and despised, and (as ministers are now by profane people) made a jest of (Hos. ix. 7) ; the prophet was the fool in the play. Wherefore came this mad fellow unto thee? (2 Kings ix. 11) said one of the captains concerning one of the sons of the prophets! The Gentiles never treated their false prophets so ill as the Jews did their true prophets, but, on the contrary, had them always in veneration. ”

“ The Jewish doctors universally agree in this rule, That the Spirit of prophecy never rests upon any but a holy and wise man, and one whose passions are allayed, [15] or, as others express it, a humble man and a man of fortitude, that is, one that has power to keep his sensual animal part in due subjection to religion and right reason. ”

“ Though there were many pretenders, that, without warrant, said Thus saith the Lord, when he sent them not, and some that prophesied in Christ's name, but he never knew them, and they indeed were workers of iniquity (Matt. vii. 22, 23) , and though the cursing blaspheming lips of Balaam and Caiaphas, even when they actually designed mischief, were over-ruled to speak oracles, yet none were employed and commissioned to speak as prophets but those that had received the Spirit of grace and sanctification; for holiness becomes God's house. ”

“ And we shall find that whatever is given by inspiration of God is profitable (2 Tim. iii. 16) , though not all alike profitable, not all alike easy or improvable; but, when the mystery of God shall be finished, we shall see, what we are now bound to believe, that there is not one idle word in all the prophecies of this book. ”

“ And therefore we find that by this the God of Israel proves himself to be God, that by his prophets he foretold things to come, which came to pass according to the prediction, Isa. xlvi. 9, 10. And by this he disproves the pretensions of the Pagan deities, that they could not show the things that were to come to pass hereafter, Isa. xli. 23. Tertullian proves the divine authority of the scripture from the fulfilling of scripture-prophecies: Idoneum, opinor, testimonium divinitatis, veritas divinationis—I conceive the accomplishment of prophecy to be a satisfactory attestation from God. ”

“ But as Jacob's dying prophecy concerning the sceptre in Judah, and the lawgiver between his feet, did not begin to be remarkably fulfilled till David's time, most of the Judges being of other tribes, so Moses's promise of a succession of prophets began not to receive its accomplishment till Samuel's time, a little before the other promise began to emerge and operate ”

“ And Huetius gives this reason why none but God can foretel things to come, Because every effect depends upon an infinite number of preceding causes, all which, in their order, must be known to him that foretels the effect, and therefore to God only, for he alone is omniscient. ”

“ Non ut amens loquitur propheta, nec in morem insanientium foeminarum dat sine mente sonum—The prophet speaks not as an insane person, nor like women wrought into fury, does he utter sound without sense. ”

“ When Moses, that great prophet, was laying down his office, he promised Israel that the Lord God would raise them up a prophet of their brethren like unto him, Deut. xviii. 15, 18. In these words, says the learned Bishop Stillingfleet [14] though, in their full and complete sense, they relate to Christ, and to him they are more than once applied in the New Testament) , there is included a promise of an order of prophets, which should succeed Moses in the Jewish church, and be the logia zonta— the living oracles among them (Acts vii. 38) , by which they might know the mind of God ”

“ Nathan spoke from himself when he encouraged David to build the temple, but afterwards knew he spoke from God when, in his name, he forbade him to do it. God had various ways of making known to his prophets the messages they were to deliver to his people; it should seem, ordinarily, to have been by the ministry of angels. In the Apocalypse Christ is expressly said to have signified by his angel to his servant John, Rev. ”

“ But many learned men look upon it to be a pious fraud, as they call it, concluding that those verses of the Sibyls which speak so very expressly of Christ and the future state were forged by some Christians and imposed upon the over-credulous. ”

“ Ab ipsis mundi incunabulis, per quatuor annorum millia, uno ore venturum Christum prædixerunt viri complures, in ejusque ortu, vitâ, virtutibus, rebus gestis, morte, ac totâ denique Oikonomia præmonstranda consenserunt—From the earliest period of time, for 4000 years, a great number of men have predicted the advent of Christ, and presented a harmonious statement of his birth, life, character, actions, and death, and of that economy which he came to establish. ”

“ Huetius, [13] though of the Romish church, condemns both the ancient and more modern compositions of the Sibyls, and refers his reader, for the proof of their vanity, to the learned Blondel. Van Dale and Gallæus look upon them to be a forgery. And the truth is they speak so much more particularly and plainly concerning our Saviour and the future state than any of the prophets of the Old Testament do, that we must conclude St. ”