lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with word of god

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The melody is fairly catchy and fast-paced, also with some optional "echo" notes. It was originally a Hebrew folk song about God's word; this got adapted loosely to an Anglophone/Christian version. (There's an even more directly Jesus-esque version in the VBS songs from far too long ago that got stuck in my brain.)

The verses are very rhythmically consistent--their pattern is 8888, which is very common. So common that it even gets a nickname, "Long Meter." Now, the verses are not the only part to the song, there's also the refrain, which comes before the verses and gives the song its title. There are several other hymns that are categorized as "LM and Refrain," which doesn't mean you can interchange any two of them, because the respective refrains might be different. But even though this one is also clearly LM and Refrain, the tune metric goes down as "PM" for "Peculiar Meter." Is it really just starting with the refrain that throws the indexing out of whack?

This text is another Martin Luther original (he's responsible for a lot of this section). It is also one where edits made for the sake of political correctness are very necessary and unambiguously appreciated, because the original list of "deceit or sword"-wielding enemies of Christianity included Luther's hot takes on Muslims and Catholics of the 1500s. So...yeah, at least there was probably not anything anti-Semitic to cut?

This is another adaptation of the parable of the sower; this one is more traditional, in that it mostly focuses on God's word as the seed. What is "the dew of heaven" that's supposed to nourish the Word, in this case?

Large left-hand gaps. The tune name is "St. Flavian," but Wikipedia reports there are several of these and it's not clear which it refers to.

The alto part is very repetitive, but then, the bass part is also getting a lot of D so it's an equal-opportunity repetition. This references Jesus' feeding of the five thousand--in this context "bread of life" isn't necessarily communion-related. I guess I'm used to parsing old-timey text rearranged to fit the meter because I didn't blink the first time at "Give me [the opportunity] to eat and live with you above." But on second glance, "give me to eat" is kind of a weird mental image.

Long extended metaphor about how God's word is like light. Light in the sky, a lantern, a "lamp of burnished gold" (is this an allusion to some obscure Bible story? I don't know if so.) It's also like navigational tools to guide metaphorical sailors (or a lighthouse, maybe?) through "mists and rocks and quicksands." Yes, the word "quicksands" appears in the ELW. If you'd asked me to bet on that proposition I would probably have lost a decent amount of money, but the "sea travel is dangerous" era was a good one for hymnwriters.

Tanzanian call-and-response song!

The "response" part of the verses is the same melody in the first and second lines, but a slightly different harmony; the second time it ends on a more "resolved" major chord instead of the "lingering" minor chord.

Swahili has a lot of consonant clusters that don't show up in English, we get words starting with Mk- like "Mkahubiri." Googling suggests that this is a form of the verb meaning "to preach" (translated as "share the good news"), but the version without the k is a lot more common.

I'll go ahead and put this in the "praise genre but good" category--the key signature (E major) indicates guitar-friendliness to me. The metaphor here is from the parable of the sower and the seeds, which relates different types of people to different types of soil where God's word may or may not "take root" and grow. So in that sense, "break the stone away" refers to the rocky ground that some people might be. But I also like that phrasing because it brings to mind rolling the stone away, as in Easter.

This is the other version of the "8/2 but with triplets" tune from here. We get some amazing redundancy in verse 2 with "breathed thine own life-breathing breath." As opposed to, uh, the other kind.

The first four verses are written in the middle of the staff, with a couple more tacked on at the end. Usually this is just because they ran out of room and wanted to save space. Interestingly (I mean, by my standards), here the first four all have the same chorus, which is mostly but not entirely trailing alleluias. Verse 5 is similar but a little different, and then verse 6 is very different. So only putting the first four with the music allows them to write that refrain only once, and then do the different versions.

This is a "second person problems" song with all the thees and thys. I forget if I've touched on it here (I think I probably have, although maybe not tagged), but generally, the pattern goes something like this:

I have a book
The book belongs to me
This is my book
The book is mine

You have a book
The book belongs to you
This is your book
This book is yours

(Second person intimate/close friend, back in the day)
Thou have a book (it's probably "hast," but let's not worry about verbs right now)
The book belongs to thee
This is thy book
The book is thine

So if the word that means "belonging to you" goes before the noun, it should usually be "thy." As in, "thy strong word." But then how do we get "thine own life-breathing breath" or "thine ordered seasons"?

Well, the other old-timey thing some writers kept doing was to add an "n" if the next sound would be a vowel, the same way we have "a book" but "an apple." So "thy" becomes "thine" for "thine own..." It also works with "my," as in "mine eyes have seen the glory."

Lots of dense allusions, which makes sense--Jesus is the Word, but there's also the Biblical word which points to Jesus, etc. "faith and hope and love" makes it in as a phrase, but flows well and doesn't feel stock-phrasey. "Word that came from heaven to die" is nice and stark. And then the last verse is sort of about the Spirit as God's Word, which makes you want to read 1 and 2 as about God the Creator and Jesus respectively...but they're all fairly interwoven.

More pertinently, I don't think it's one verse for each person of the Trinity, because I think there's at least one other verse that got cut (for political correctness reasons or otherwise). "Word that caused blind eyes to see/Speak and heal our mortal blindness." "Mortal blindness" is a great turn of phrase (for one, you can kind of imagine dropping the "t" and it still makes sense), but maybe they wanted to avoid disability as a metaphor for ethical flaws.

Haven't we already heard several different versions of this one?

No. I mean, yes, the melody is "A Mighty Fortress" which we've heard several different versions of in this section alone, but the text is completely different. While still being about the word of God. And it's translated from Danish, not German.

Is the rhyme scheme any good?

Well, "heritage" rhymes with "age to age," so. Eye rhymes!

How's the Shannon density?

Pretty low. There are eight lines, but 4+ of them are the same for all three verses. (Some lines only differ by one word.) This would be a funny one to actually compute repetition ratio for (don't worry, I'll spare you) because in some places it's just "three words in the same line, and then the stuff in between changes." Despite this, it manages to take up two pages, which is kind of rare, because the music is longer-than-average and not that repetitive.

What about the text?

It's a fairly loose adaptation of the parable of the sower, I think--in the Bible story, the sower sows lots of seed (spreading the word), but it doesn't take root or last long in inhospitable environments (people). This is a somewhat more cheerful account which focuses on the "good seed" and envisioning God as taking a more active gardening role in nourishing our faith.

Which of the prophets wrote with "eager" and which with "reluctant pen"?

Unclear!

Paul seems to be on the eager side, he gets credit for a lot of the New Testament books. (Whether or not he actually wrote all of them is disputed.) Then again, sometimes he was in jail and had nothing else to do. David is credited with a lot of the Psalms, and he seems to have been very prolific and happy about it. The more reluctant ones are people like Moses and some other Old Testament prophets, who didn't really want to deliver God's word. In Moses' case it's because he just wasn't into public speaking; for some of his successors, it was more like "I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, the people are much more into false prophets who promise prosperity and glory than this vengeance and punishment stuff God is going on about." Sometimes the first five books of the Bible (Pentateuch) are called the "books of Moses," but on their own they don't really all seem to have been written by him.

Where is the copyright?

The Sisters of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

Who cares?

Me, because this is a fairly unfamiliar farming metaphor and I have a more interesting segue.

Don't use your fun facts too quickly, there's a lot of boring hymns left to go through.

Whatever, I might not get there, so might as well act while I can.

I guess. So, what's so interesting about St. Joseph?

In addition to the College of St. Benedict, there's an affiliated men's college, St. John's University.

Why is the women's college just a college and the men's a full-scale university?

Not sure. Anyway, St. John's is famous for commissioning a beautiful modern-day illuminated Bible with fancy gold letterings, and Minnesota wildlife in the margins.

Aren't they also the ones with the basketball team?

Different college. They have a football coach that was around basically forever though.

Another version of this song?

Yes. We are really into it. This is just an older translation though, same melody (/rhythm).

What was wrong with that translation, too masculine?

Not really? I think it was just a less accurate translation.

Does this have any good parodies?

For questionable values of "good," and also "parody" because it's pretty sincere, but one of my union labor choir friends rewrote this translation to be about how actually, the union is a mighty fortress, and a bulwark never failing. Spoiler alert: the "one little word [that] shall triumph" is "Solidarity"!

Didn't we just do this one?

Yes, but Lutherans really like it.

Same text? Same pitches?

Basically, yeah.

Then why twice?

Oh we're just getting started.

But. Why.

So, the previous arrangement was just melody. This has harmonization too.

They couldn't have combined it into one like they do for all the other harmonizations?

Not in this case. See, this one is in 4/4 with even measures. The previous one doesn't really have measures, the durations of the notes are just kinda "whatever" and it's more dance like.

So do they have different hymn tune names?

No, the hymn tune is "Ein feste burg" (which is just the German for "A Mighty Fortress") in both cases.

Then how do you tell them apart?

In the hymn tune index (yes, of course there is one), the previous version is "Ein feste burg (rhythmic)" and this one is "Ein feste burg (isometric)."

Isn't an isometry also a sort of function in mathematical analysis that preserves--

Yes, yes, that's something else though.

What is the significance of this song?

It's probably the best known "Lutheran" hymn. Both the text and music were written by Martin Luther, and it's often sung on Reformation Day (October 31) which commemorates the beginnings of Protestantism.

What is the text based on?

Very loosely, Psalm 46.

What do you mean, "loosely"?

The hymn is very, uh, fighting-oriented, with imagery of "swords and shields." (And of course, it talks about Jesus, who isn't around to be mentioned during the Psalm era.) The Psalm, at least in the translation (NRSV) that I'm most familiar with, describes God as a "refuge and strength," which I guess can be turned into a fortress without squinting too hard. It also has stuff about "God is in the midst of the city" which is a great mental image, and "be still and know that I am God," which is a little too...chill for Luther.

Luther had a lot of biases and warlike stuff going on, is that what you mean?

Yep. Also a lot of fart jokes.