angela hormberg

Tag: Bible

  • The Principles Matthew Henry Employs

    In the “Preface” section of his book, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Henry provides a list of the six driving principles he employed while writing his book.

    1. “That religion is the on thing useful; and to know, and love, and fear God our Maker, and in all the instances of both of devout affection, and of good conversation, to keep his commandments is without doubt, the whole of man” (ic)
      • “to preserve honor and order” (ic)
      • “for us to answer ‘the end of our creation” (ic)
      • “obtain God’s favor” (ic)
      • “have peace and comfort” (ic)
      • “be happy” (ic)
    2. “That divine revelation is necessary to true religion, to the being and support of it.” (ic)
    3. “That divine revelation only comes through God’s word, the Bible” (ic)
      • “it is that which is written, that remains”
      • “The scripture indeed is not complied as a methodical system or body of divinity…but several ways of writing (histories, laws, prophecies, songs, epistles and even proverbs)”
      • “a mind rightly disposed by a humble, sincere subjection to his Maker, will easily discover
        • “the image of God’s wisdom in the awful depth of its mysteries”
        • “the image of his sovereignty in the commanding majesty of its style”
        • “the image of his unity in the unspotted purity of its precepts, and”
        • “the image of his goodness in the manifest tendency of the whole to the welfare and happiness of mankind in both worlds”
    4. “That the scriptures of the Old and New Testament were purposely designed for our learning.” (c)
      • “The subject of the holy scriptures is the universal and perpetual , and therefore of common concern. It is intended,
        • 1. To revive the universal and perpetual law of nature, the very remains of which (or ruins rather) of natural conscience, give us hints that we must look somewhere else for a fairer copy.”
        • 2. “To reveal the universal and perpetual law of grace, which God’s common beneficence to the children of men, such as puts them into a better state than that of devils, gives us some ground to expect.”
      • “…the New Testament expounds and completes the old, and thereby makes it more serviceable to us now than it was to the Jewish church, as the Old Testament confirms and illustrates the New, and shows us Jesus Christ the same yesterday that he is to-day and will be forever.”
    5. “That the holy scriptures were not only designed for our learning, but are the settled standing rule of our faith and practice, by which we must be governed now and judged shortly.” (c-ci)
    6. “That therefore it is the duty of all Christians diligently to search the scriptures, and it is the office of ministers to guide and assist them therein.” (ci)

    Works Cited

    Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary On the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition. “Preface”. Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., March 1996.

    © 2024 Angela Hormberg

  • “Genesis” – Commonplace

    These commonplace quotes are taken from Holy Bible: Giant Print with Study Helps, King James Version.

    • 1:1 “In the beginning God created” (1)
    • 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created” (3)
    • 2:10 “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads” (3)
    • 2:15 “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it”
    • 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (3)
    • 2:18 “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him. (3)
    • 2:23-24 “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (4)
    • 3:1 “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God made” (4)
    • 3:7 “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (4)
    • 3:16 “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (5)
    • 3:19 “…till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (5)
    • 3:24 “So he drove out the man” (5)
    • 3:24 “…and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (5)

    Works Cited

    Holy Bible: Giant Print with Study Aids. Dugan Publishers, Inc., 1984.

    © 2024 Angela Hormberg

  • “Genesis” – Favorite Footnotes

    Following are some of my favorite footnotes from my Zondervan NIV Study Bible:

    • Genesis 1:1-2:3
      • “In the ancient Near East, most of the peoples had myths relating how the world came to be.  Prevalent in those myths were accounts of how one of the gods triumphed over a fierce and powerful beast that represented disorder, then fashioned the ordered world that people knew, and finally was proclaimed by the other gods to be the divine “king” over the world he had created – a position ever subject to the forces of disorder.
      • Over against all those pagan myths, the author of Genesis taught a radically new doctrine of creation: The one and only true God did not have to overcome a mighty cosmic champion of chaos but simply by a series of his royal creation decrees called into being the ordered world, the visible kingdom that those decrees continue to uphold and govern.  The author teaches this doctrine of creation in the form of a narrative that recounts the story of God’s creative acts.  The author narrates those acts from the perspective of one who was an eyewitness to events in God’s royal council chamber, where he issues his creative decrees.  For a similar narrative perspective see Job 1:6-12, 2:1-6.”

    Zondervan NIV Study Bible. Edited by Kenneth L. Barker, et.al. Zondervan, 2002.

    © 2024 Angela Hormberg

  • “Genesis” – Notes

    The following notes are taken from my Zondervan NIV Study Bible from “Introduction:Genesis”.

    “Author and Date of Writing” section

    • Moses was the author (2)
    • “4th year of Solomon’s reign was the same as the 480 year after the Exodus” relates to 1 Kings. Thus “Exodus 1446 BC (2)
    • “40 years of desert wanderings 1446 – 1406” (2)

    “Theological Theme and Message” section

    • Relationships (2)
      • “God and creation”
      • “God and humankind”
      • “Relationships between humankind”
    • Monotheistic God
      • vs. polytheistic “many gods” (2)
      • vs. atheist “no god” (2)
      • vs. pantheistic “everything is Divine” (2)
    • 10 Main sections each beginning with the word “account”
      • 1:1-11:26 primeval account

    “Literary Features” Section

    • “The narrative frequently concentrates on the life of a later son in preference to a first born.” (3)
    • prose punctuated by poetry
    • “vertical and horizontal parallelism between the two sets of three days” (3)
    • “ebb and flow of sin and judgment” (3)
      • “(the serpent and woman and man sin successively; then God questions them in reverse order; then he judges them” (3)
    • “powerful monotony of ‘then he died’” @ the end of paragraphs in ch 5 (3)
    • “the climactic hinge effect of the phrase ‘But God remembered Noah’ (8:1) at the midpoint of the flood story” (3)
    • “the hourglass structure of the account of the tower of Babel in 11:1-9” (3)
    • “the alternation between brief accounts about 1st born sons and lengthy accounts about younger sons” (3)
    • “subjects in first three chapters of Genesis repeated in last three chapters of Revelation” (3)

    Works Cited

    Zondervan NIV Study Bible. Edited by Kenneth L. Barker, et.al. Zondervan, 2002.

    © 2024 Angela Hormberg

  • “Genesis” – Book List

    Following are notes taken from my NIV Study Bible, “Introduction:Genesis”, “Background” Section

    • “Gilgamesh Epic” – “close to flood narrative” – 11th tablet (1)
    • “Enuma Elish” – “Marduk’s rise to supremacy” (1)
    • “Atrahasis” epic – similar to Gen 1-8 (1)
    • “Mari letters” – partriarch names (1)
    • “Nuzi tablets” – partriarchal customs (1)
    • “Tale of Two Brothers” – Egyptian origin – “close to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife” (1)

    © 2024 Angela Hormberg