Matthew Henry: Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 4 (Isaiah to Malachi)

MATTHEW HENRY: COMMENTARY ON THE WHOLE BIBLE, VOL. 4 (ISAIAH TO MALACHI) Matthew Henry

Date: 1706–1721. Public domain. Source: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc4

Matthew Henry's

Commentary on the Whole Bible

Unabridged

Volume IV

Isaiah to Malachi

P R E F a C E

Isaiah to Malachi

Those books of scripture are all prophetical of which here, in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, we have endeavoured a methodical explication and a practical improvement. I call them prophetical because so they are for the main, though we have some histories (here and there brought in for the illustration of the prophecies) and a book of Lamentations. Our Saviour often puts the Law and the Prophets for all the Old Testament. The prophets, by waiving the ceremonial precepts, and not insisting on them, but only on the weightier matters of the law, plainly intimated the abolishing of that part of the law of Moses by the gospel; and by their many predictions of Christ, and the kingdom of his grace, they intimated the accomplishing the perfecting of that part of the law of Moses in the gospel. Thus the prophets were the nexus--the connecting bond between the law and the gospel, and are therefore fitly placed between them.

These books, being prophetical, are, as such, divine, and of heavenly origin and extraction. We have human laws, human histories, and human poems, as well as divine ones, but we can have no human prophecies. Wise and good men may make prudent conjectures concerning future events (moral prognostications we call them); but it is essential to true prophecy that it be of God. The learned Huetius lays this down for one of his axioms, Omnis prophetica facultas à Deo est--The prophetic talent is entirely from God; and he proves it to be the sense both of Jews and heathen that it is God's prerogative to foresee things to come, and that whoever had such a power had it from God. 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. But then…