John Gill commentary

Area: Commentaries Milestone: v2

Context

Problem: Different readers prefer different commentary styles. While Matthew Henry is devotional and practical, some readers want more scholarly, linguistically detailed exposition — especially those studying the original Greek and Hebrew.

Solution: John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746-1766) is included as the second commentary source. Gill was a Baptist pastor and scholar known for detailed analysis of the original languages. His commentary is the most extensive in BibleWeb with 28,300 entries.

Not included: Gill's other theological works (Body of Divinity, etc.). Only the verse-by-verse exposition is included.

Functional

John Gill's commentary is available as the second tab in the commentary drawer. It works identically to Matthew Henry — the user switches tabs to read Gill's exposition instead.

User flow:

User opens the commentary drawer on any verse
Clicks the "John Gill" tab
Reads Gill's detailed exposition
Can switch back to other tabs

Edge cases:

Gill covers more verses than Matthew Henry — 28,300 entries vs 4,123
Gill's entries tend to be detailed and reference Greek/Hebrew terms
Some entries are very long

UX & Design

Same as Matthew Henry — appears as the second tab in the commentary drawer. No visual distinction in rendering between commentary sources.

Technical

Data:

DB table: commentaries with source = 'john_gill'
Row count: 28,300 entries — the largest commentary source (7x more than Matthew Henry)
Same schema as Matthew Henry: verse_id, source, text, text_nl

Data source: Present in the BibleGame runtime database (~/Code/BibleGame/Data/bible.db). Seeded separately from Matthew Henry and Kanttekeningen.

Component: Same CommentaryDrawer.svelte — John Gill is the second tab in SOURCE_ORDER.

Files:

apps/web/src/lib/components/bible/CommentaryDrawer.svelte — shared component
apps/web/src/routes/api/commentaries/[bookId]/[chapter]/[verse]/+server.ts — shared API
apps/web/src/lib/server/queries/commentaries.ts — shared queries

Status

Current: DONE Milestone: v2 Priority: High — the most detailed commentary source

History:

John Gill was added to BibleGame as a complement to Matthew Henry's more devotional style
Contains the most entries of any commentary source in the app

Dependencies:

Requires: commentary drawer (DONE), tier system (DONE)
Used by: AI chat RAG pipeline

Screenshots

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