CBD has a 6 volume set of Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible for $39.99. The key features of their set are:
• Modern easy-to-read modern type with Scripture passages in bold
• Complete and unabridged in 6 volumes
• Includes The Life of Matthew Henry by J. B. Williams
• Entirely faithful to the original
Would you recommend his commentaries?
Also, does he have any "strange" beliefs that I should watch out for?
Thanks!
An absolute must!
You won't find a more wholesome and trustworthy guide to the Scriptures than Matthew Henry's Commentary, it is a true classic. Even in what seem to be dry places, such as the genealogies, he provides much spiritual edification and practical application. It reads very easily also if you want to use it for family devotion. It's my wife's go to resource when she is trying to study a particular passage. I have been using it in personal devotion time, for the last 3 or 4 years. Currently I'm in The Book of Psalms, in Volume III.
He has the amazing ability to communicate across denominational lines also, even though he himself was a Presbyterian minister, and held to the Westminster Standards, and yet I've read where his commentary was recommended as a great resource in Mennonite and Pentecostal periodicals!
Joel Beeke and Mark Jones say this about Henry in their book, Meet the Puritans:
"in 1704, at the age of forty-two, Henry began work on a Bible commentary, based on his system of expository preaching and the copious notes and writings on the Bible that he had compiled during his ministry. He had learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as a child, and also had a working knowledge of French; this gave him a wide range of reading. Additionally, he had a keen spirit of inquiry, profound knowledge, and the ability to convey doctrinal matters in a simple yet profound way."
You might want to consider looking on E Bay for older editions of the work. I have a Hendricksen edition from the 90's, and it has quite a few printing errors, ( I don't know if they've been corrected in the newer editions). The print is larger in the older editions also, plus they are better looking hardbacks and sturdier. World and MacConald Publishers both put out a set I believe in the 80's which look great. I have the latter, which my dear wife actually found in a Goodwill store in mint condition for $6 for the complete set!!
Let me leave you with Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers evaluation of Matthew Henry's Commentary:
"First among the mighty for general usefulness we are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word, MATTHEW HENRY. He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering with metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations, superabundant in reflections. He delights in apposition and alliteration; he is usually plain, quaint, and full of pith; he sees right through a text directly; apparently he is not critical, but he quietly gives the result of an accurate critical knowledge of the original fully up to the best critics of his time. He is not versed in the manners and customs of the East, for the Holy Land was not so accessible as in our day; but he is deeply spiritual, heavenly, and profitable; finding good matter in every text, and from all deducing most practical and judicious lessons. His is a kind of commentary to be placed where I saw it, in the old meeting house at Chester—chained in the vestry for anybody and everybody to read. It is the poor man's commentary, the old Christian's companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all. His own account of how he was led to write his exposition, affords us an example of delighting in the law of the Lord. "If any desire to know how so mean and obscure a person as I am, who in learning, judgment, felicity of expression, and all advantages for such a service, am less than the least of all my Master's servants, came to venture upon so great a work, I can give no other account of it but this. It has long been my practice, what little time I had to spare in my study from my constant preparations for the pulpit, to spend it in drawing up expositions upon some parts of the New Testament, not so much for my own use, as purely for my own entertainment, because I know not how to employ my thoughts and time more to my satisfaction.
Trahit sua quemque voluptas; every man that studies hath some beloved study, which is his delight above any other; and this is mine. It is that learning which it was my happiness from a child to be trained up in by my ever honoured father, whose memory must always be very dear and precious to me. He often minded me, that a good textuary is a good divine; and that I should read other books with this in my eye, that I might be the better able to understand and apply the Scripture." You are aware, perhaps, that the latter part of the New Testament was completed by other hands, the good man having gone the way of all flesh. The writers were Messrs, Evans, Brown, Mayo, Bays, Rosewell, Harriss, Atkinson, Smith, Tong, Wright, Merrell, Hill, Reynolds, and Billingsley—all Dissenting ministers. They have executed their work exceedingly well, have worked in much of the matter which Henry had collected, and have done their best to follow his methods, but their combined production is far inferior to Matthew Henry himself, and any reader will soon detect the difference. Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully through once at least. I should recommend you to get through it in the next twelve months after you leave college. Begin at the beginning, and resolve that you will traverse the goodly land from Dan to Beersheba. You will acquire a vast store of sermons if you read with your notebook close at hand; and as for thoughts, they will swarm around you like twittering swallows around an old gable towards the close of autumn. If you publicly expound the chapter you have just been reading, your people will wonder at the novelty of your remarks and the depth of your thoughts, and then you may tell them what a treasure Henry is. Mr. Jay's sermons bear indubitable evidence of his having studied Matthew Henry almost daily. Many of the quaint things in Jay's sermons are either directly traceable to Matthew Henry or to his familiarity with that writer. I have thought that the style of Jay was founded upon Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry is Jay writing, Jay is Matthew Henry preaching. What more could I say in commendation either of the preacher or the author?
