From the Preface:
This volume aims to present the entire Sacred History of the Hebrew people from the death of Moses to the close of the Old Testament. Its special objects are — to trace the hand of God in this history, and to suggest the advancing revelations made of his character and moral government; to develop the leading human characters, and the significance of the great historic events; to explain difficult passages; to bring out the connections between sacred and profane history, in order both to illustrate and to confirm the records of Scripture; to place the History of the Old Testament by the side of its psalmody and its Prophecy, in order to infuse into the History somewhat of its own living soul, and to give to the Prophecy its due illustration and impression.
Über den Autor
Henry Cowles (1803 – 1881) was an American theological scholar. He graduated from Yale College in 1826. After two years of study in the Yale Divinity School, he was ordained, with a view to home-missionary work, at Hartford, Conn., July 1, 1828.He went to Ohio, and after laboring about two years in Ashtabula and Sandusky, took charge of the Congregational Church in Austinburg, where he remained until the fall of 1835, when he became Professor of Latin and Greek in Oberlin College. In 1838 he was transferred to the chair of Ecclesiastical History, and in 1840 to that of Hebrew, in the Theological Department, in which he continued until 1848, at that time he became the editor of the Oberlin Evangelist, which he conducted until 1863. For the rest of his life he remained in Oberlin, engaged in literary labor. During the fourteen years from 1867 he published sixteen volumes of Commentaries, covering the whole Scriptures, and devoted the profits arising from them to the missionary cause.