Lightfoot, JOHN, one of the earlier Hebrew scholars of England, was born in 1602 at Stoke-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, son of the vicar of Uttoxeter. He had his education at Christ's College, Cambridge, and, after taking orders, became chaplain to Sir Rowland Cotton, himself a fair Hebraist. In 1629 appeared his Erubhin, or Miscellanies Christian and Judaical, dedicated to Sir R. Cotton, who in 1630 presented him to the rectory of Ashley in Staffordshire, where he laboured with incessant zeal for twelve years. He next removed to London, and was chosen minister of St Bartholomew's, to the parishioners of which he dedicated his Handful of Gleanings out of the Book of Exodus (1643). Lightfoot was one of the most influential members of the Westminster Assembly in 1643, but often stood alone, as in the Erastian controversy. In the same year he was chosen Master of Catharine Hall, Cambridge, and rector of Much Munden in Hertfordshire, and in 1655 vice-chancellor of the university. At the Restoration he complied with the terms of the Act of Uniformity. He died at Ely, December 6, 1675.
The chief works of this great Rabbinical scholar were the unfinished Harmony of the Four Evangelists among themselves (1644-50); Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles (1645); The Harmony, Chronicle, and Order of the Old Testament (1647); of the New (1655); and the Horæ Hebraicæ et Talmudicæ (1658-74; last part posthumously), the great labour of his life. The best edition of his whole works is that edited by the Rev. J. R. Pitman, with a Life (13 vols. 1822-25).