Matthew Poole's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Todd Phillips
Todd Phillips Member Posts: 6,736 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Now that Albert Barnes and his notes have been saved from publishing purgatory, let's get a historical commentary I want out of community pricing.  It's Matthew Poole's Commentary, also known as Annotations upon the Word of God.

Poole was an English Puritan who lived from 1624–1679.  Prior to writing his English commentary, he spent ten years writing his 5 volume Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacrae Scripturae Interpretum -- which is "a summary or digest of the best of the
critical interpreters on every verse of the
Bible. He focuses on Reformation-era interpreters (Jewish, Catholic,
Reformed, Lutheran), but, through those interpreters, he also sets forth
the best of the thought of the old rabbis, Church Fathers, and Medieval
schoolmen."  This work was only published in Latin, but surely its fruits are reflected in his subsequent English Annontations.

Charles Spurgoen held Poole in much higher esteem than he did Barnes (indeed, even higher than John Gill*). Only Matthew Henry and John Calvin were rated higher in his Lectures to My Students:

[quote]

MATTHEW POOLE also wrote ANNOTATIONS† upon the Word of God, in English, which are mentioned by Matthew Henry as having passed through many impressions in his day, and he not only highly praises them, but declares that he has in his own work all along been brief upon that which Mr. Poole has more largely discussed, and has industriously declined what is to be found there. The three volumes, tolerably cheap, and easily to be got at, are necessaries for your libraries. On the whole, if I must have only one commentary, and had read Matthew Henry as I have, I do not know but what I should choose Poole. He is a very prudent and judicious commentator; and one of the few who could honestly say, “We have not willingly balked any obvious difficulty, and have designed a just satisfaction to all our readers; and if any knot remains yet untied, we have told our readers what hath been most probably said for their satisfaction in the untying of it.” Poole is not so pithy and witty by far as Matthew Henry, but he is perhaps more accurate, less a commentator, and more an expositor. You meet with no ostentation of learning in Matthew Poole, and that for the simple reason that he was so profoundly learned as to be able to give results without a display of his intellectual crockery. A pedant who is forever quoting Ambrose and Jerome, Piscator and Œcolampadius, in order to show what a copious reader he has been, is usually a dealer in small wares, and quotes only what others have quoted before him, but he who can give you the result and outcome of very extensive reading without sounding a trumpet before him is the really learned man. Mind you do not confound the Annotations with the Synopsis; the English work is not a translation of the Latin one, but an entirely distinct performance. Strange to say, like the other great Matthew he did not live to complete his work beyond Isaiah 58; other hands united to finish the design.

So let's get Matthew Poole's Commentary on the Whole Bible to production.

On the product page, the image links for volume 3 are currently broken. I fiddled around and figured out what they should be:  image1 image2 image3 image4 image5 image6 image7

However, the whole work can be viewed on Google books.  Links to each volume can be found here: 
http://libguides.calvin.edu/content.php?pid=47579&sid=442938

 

*Let's get the Works of John Gill moving too, but Poole is shorter and therefore cheaper and easier to get to production.

MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540

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