Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible
To the best of our knowledge we are of the understanding that this book, being published in 1706, and freely available elsewhere on the internet is in the public domain.
Matthew Henry was born in Wales and lived from 1662 to 1714. Matthew Henry's well-known six-volume Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708–10) or Complete Commentary, provides an exhaustive verse by verse study of the Bible, covering the whole of the Old Testament, and the Gospels and Acts in the New Testament. After the author's death, the work was finished (Romans through Revelation) by thirteen other nonconformist ministers, partly based upon notes taken by Henry's hearers, and edited by George Burder and John Hughes in 1811.
Commentary Structure
In studying Henry's commentary (on both paper and electronic formats) it will be helpful to appreciate the rather complex structure used. This is as follows and is used throughout with very few exceptions:
Verses 1-10
PART
in Roman Numerals: I. ... II. ... III. ...
ITEM
Numbered: 1. ... 2. ... 3. ...
SUB-ITEM
Numbered in brackets: (1.) ... (2.) ... (3.) ...
SUB-ITEM
Numbered in square brackets: [1.] ... [2.] ... [3.] ...
SUB-ITEM LIST
First, ... Secondly, ... Thirdly, ...
Within the SUB-ITEM LIST the sequence is repeated thus; 1. 2. 3. then (1.) (2.) (3.) then [1.] [2.] [3.] etc.
Also note:
1. There are not many chapters which go down to the level of [1.] [2.] etc within the sub-item list.
2. There are a few chapters where lower level lists of First, Secondly, etc are used within a parent list. This does lead to some further complexity and in some of these cases (a.) (b.) is used in place of (1.) (2.) etc. However, in the files presented here an attempt has been made to simplify this by removing multiple levels of First, Secondly, etc. by renumbering using for example [1.1].