Barnes' Notes: Minor Prophets, vol. 2: Micah to Malachi

by E. B. Pusey

Publisher:

Funk & Wagnalls

, 1885

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.

Contents

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)

Product Details

• 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

About E. B. Pusey

Pusey, Edward (1800–1882) was leader in the Anglo–Catholic Oxford movement within the Church of England.

Pusey was Regius Professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ Church at Oxford. He shared with other brilliant young Oxford conservatives concern about the rising tide of biblical and theological liberalism and the reform spirit rampant in Britain during the late 1820s and 1830s. He contributed to reviving a “dead” High Church orthodoxy by stimulating knowledge of the early church fathers and of non–Puritan Anglicans of the seventeenth century. Their teaching had been obscured, in his estimation, by Deism, Broad Church theological indifference, and the evangelicals’ concentration upon God’s work alone in justification and the experience of that. Pusey began to warn against the dangers of the new German theology, which he had studied firsthand. He began in late 1833 to contribute to the Tracts for the Times edited by John Henry Newman and to make the Tracts significant expressions of Anglo– Catholic teaching. He established a residence for theological students and a society for professors, tutors, and graduates in order to spread his principles. In 1836, he commenced editing translations of early Christian writers under the title The Library of the Fathers, which became a lifetime project, the last of the forty–eight volumes being published after his death. He was the first person of prominence to identify himself publicly with the movement, causing “Puseyism” to become the sometimes popular designation for it.

Because of an 1843 sermon, “The Holy Eucharist,” he was suspended two years from preaching at Oxford for the Romish views expressed, an event that contributed to the conversion of Newman and others to Roman Catholicism. Pusey, however, remained steadfastly within the Church of England. He had learned to bear much sorrow in his private life through strict discipline and such practices as the wearing of a hair shirt. Nor did he share Newman’s view that officials were to be obeyed absolutely. Pusey’s strength helped retain others. He was instrumental in 1845 in establishing an order of sisters in London. This was evidence of his personal charity and of new vitality among Anglo–Catholics in reaching the poor, as well as of the Church’s ability to accept Anglo–Catholic concepts. In 1846, he resumed his university preaching, taking up theologically where he had left off. Later, a new wave of liberalism in the church provided Pusey his final thrusts of public activity against the influence of Benjamin Jowett and biblical higher criticism.