An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)

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An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)
by Matthew Henry

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Old Testament and Gospels/Acts sections first published between 1706 and 1710; Remainder of New Testament (Epistles and Revelation) edited and completed from Henry's notes, in 1721 in folio form, by a committee of nonconformist ministers. Popularly known as "Matthew Henry's Commentary".

This particular printing appears to be an undated reprint by Ed. Barrington & Geo. D. Haswell of the First American Edition printed by Towar & Hogan in 1828. The section(s) containing the actual commentary appear to be taken from the same type setup as the Towar and Hogan edition which can be found on the HathiTrust site (Volume 1). This has a clearer reproduction and can therefore be used for comparison where punctuation is too faint to be identified in the current reproduction of the Barrington and Haswell reprint. Interestingly corrections were found in Barrington & Haswell's Psalm 7 and Isaiah 6 and Acts 7 where smaller type was used on one line to allow the insertion or correction of a word missed out or misspelled in the Towar and Hogan 1828/9 printing; though strangely, in Psalm 9:6 in Barrington & Haswell a comma has been moved from the correct position in Towar and Hogan to a nonsensical position before the previous word "cities". Perhaps the plate for that page had become damaged and had to be set up again, because it is clear from peculiarities on other pages that the two printings are normally done from the same plates.

Incidentally, a sample page on an eBay listing showing precisely the same page content, suggests that Robert Carter & Brothers of New York reproduced from the same source as late as 1853.

The obvious assumption from the title page of the 1828 Towar and Hogan edition is that it is derived directly from the 1811 Burder & Hughes (London, Samuel Bagster), described by Henry's biographer Williams as "the best edition", and, examining a couple of pages of Volume 4, in general that seems to be followed very closely, but some differences have been noted which seem to have come from elsewhere, e.g "the other three" found at Preface to the Prophetical Books, page vi. In the case of obvious oddities in the text, comparison to the London edition has sometimes been made, and noted, when making a SIC correction.

Volumes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of a Samuel Bagster edition are now available online at the British Library [note: temporarily? down as at 12 Oct 2023], digitised by Google, though some title pages, a memoir, and some other preliminaries are missing . Volume 3 is at Google Books but somehow got missed off the British Library's online collection. The volumes at Google Books are as follows: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6. I compared one page in Joshua between the Barrington and Haswell edition and the Bagster one from the British Library and found that some minor mistakes in the Bagster edition had been corrected in the American one, the only other changes on that particular page being a couple of changes to capitals at the beginning of words. So it may be that the American edition is actually superior, and an excellent basis for an authoritative edition in modern spelling (editions previous to the 1811 Bagster one having long esses and other slight differences from present-day spelling, e.g. "numbrest" for "numberest" [in KJV quotation], "tho'" for "though", "chearfully" for "cheerfully").

Volume One

Pentateuch

Volume Two

Early Jewish History

The Times of the Kings

Post-Exile Historical Books

Hagiographa

Volume Three

Hagiographa (continued)

Books of Poetry and Wisdom

Volume Four

Major Prophets

Minor Prophets

Volume Five

Gospels

Volume Six

Acts

Epistles (including Revelation)

Pauline Epistles

General Epistles

Apocalypses