The Commentators

The English Annotations (1657)

Annotations upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament was published in London in 1645, in two folio volumes, and enlarged in later editions (1651, 1657). It was prepared by a group of divines working at the request of Parliament, among them John Downame, who saw it through the press, Thomas Gataker, William Gouge, Daniel Featley and John Ley. Several of them sat in the Westminster Assembly, and the work is often called the Westminster Annotations, though the Assembly did not issue it. This volume takes its notes from the third edition (1657). Its notes on the prophets are fuller than its notes on the epistles: a reading of the Hebrew, a cross-reference, and often an application to the reader’s own day. The writer of the notes on Haggai is not named in the book.

Poole (1685)

Matthew Poole (1624–1679), a Presbyterian minister ejected from his London living in 1662, is best known for his Latin Synopsis Criticorum, a digest of the critics on the whole Bible. His English Annotations upon the Holy Bible was left unfinished at his death, at Isaiah 58, and was completed by a group of his friends; it appeared in two volumes in 1683 and 1685, Haggai in the second. The volume does not name them, and this edition does not assign the notes on Haggai to a writer. The label “Poole” names the work, not the writer.

Henry (1712)

Matthew Henry (1662–1714), Presbyterian minister at Chester and then at Hackney, carried his Exposition of the Old and New Testament to the end of Acts before his death. The prophets are his own work, published in the fourth volume (1712). His exposition is practical: each section is followed by “Notes” that apply the text to the reader.

Gill (1758)

John Gill (1697–1771) was for over fifty years pastor of the Baptist church that met at Horsleydown and later at Carter Lane, Southwark. A largely self-taught scholar of Hebrew and of the rabbinic writers, he wrote an Exposition of the New Testament in three volumes (1746–48) and then one of the Old Testament, the first verse-by-verse commentary on the whole Bible by a Baptist; his exposition of the prophets appeared in 1757–58. He was a strict Calvinist, and his expositions are full, learned and often long, with much from the Targum and the Jewish commentators; the excerpts here take the sentences that explain the text.