Free Psalms Commentaries

You can read four full commentaries on the Psalms free online: Charles Spurgeon's Treasury of David, Matthew Henry's commentary, John Calvin's Commentary on the Book of Psalms and Albert Barnes' Notes. Each one covers all 150 psalms. This site also has its own plain English commentary. Every psalm page explains its key verses one at a time, then gives five study questions and a prayer, so a search like Psalm 90 commentary is answered on the Psalm 90 page.

The four older works were written between the 1500s and the 1880s. They differ in length and purpose, so the notes below say what each one is and where the free copies are. No paid books are ranked here.

Charles Spurgeon lived from 1834 to 1892. The Treasury of David is his commentary on the whole Book of Psalms. According to the Spurgeon Archive, it first came out in installments in The Sword and the Trowel over about twenty years, and the seventh and final volume was released in 1885. Volume 1, from 1869, covers Psalms 1 to 26. The Spurgeon Archive has it free, with a separate page for each of the 150 psalms. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library also hosts the volumes, and scans of the printed books are on the Internet Archive.

Matthew Henry lived from 1662 to 1714. His Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, often called his Complete Commentary, was published from 1708 to 1710. It works through the Bible section by section, and its purpose is practical and devotional rather than technical. The Psalms are in Volume III, which runs from Job to the Song of Solomon, and the Christian Classics Ethereal Library has it free to read online. Henry did not live to finish the whole Bible. The last volume, Romans to Revelation, was completed by other ministers after his death, so the Psalms section is his own work. A shorter version, the Concise commentary, is also online.

John Calvin lived from 1509 to 1564 and wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible. His Commentary on the Book of Psalms is free on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library in five volumes, the first covering Psalms 1 to 35. In it, Calvin also describes his own conversion. Albert Barnes lived from 1798 to 1870. His Notes on the Psalms fill three volumes, and his Notes on Job, the Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel were widely distributed. His notes were known for making Bible scholarship plain for general readers. Bible Hub prints Barnes' Notes psalm by psalm, from Psalm 1 to Psalm 150.

If you want many voices on a single verse, Bible Hub gathers dozens of commentaries on each verse of the Psalms on one page. They include Barnes, Calvin, Gill, Clarke, Keil and Delitzsch, Matthew Henry and the Treasury of David, with some modern ones mixed in, so check the author before you quote. On this site, each psalm page has a section called the psalm's commentary, explained verse by verse. The notes are written from the words of the psalm itself, in plain English. Anything that goes beyond the text, such as history or church use, is only said with a source, and the source is listed at the foot of the page.