As we approach Candlemas tomorrow, I’ve picked as today’s hymn “Bless the Lord, the God of Israel”. The reasoning is that at Candlemas we sing the priest Simeon’s song on seeing the baby Jesus (Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, Luke 2:29-32). There is a direct parallel in Zechariah’s song (Luke 1:68-79) at the circumcision of his son Jehohanan (known to us as John the Baptist). Zechariah, had received an angelic message that he would be the father of a prophet but was struck dumb until the day of the boy’s naming and circumcision ceremony, after his wife had without prompting confirmed the boy’s name. His very personal song starts with praise to God but is partly addressed to his son – “and you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way”. The hymn version of it puts that into the third person – “this child will be a herald making ready all God’s ways”.
Zechariah’s song looks back as well as forwards – back to God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and would always be free to worship God. The rest of the story of the Bible after that is a series of repeated fallings and risings, as Abraham’s people forgot God’s commandments or deliberately broke them, and had to be brought back through either the exhortation of prophets or being broken by wars and plagues.
John’s role as the forerunner of Jesus Christ was as a prophet, certainly, like all those before who had called on people to turn round (repent) and come back to God. But Jesus called John “more than a prophet” (Luke 7:26), explaining “This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
The ‘light’ theme of Candlemas appears in verse 3 – “So may all who dwell in darkness see the shadows disappear, while he guides our feet in pathways where his peace is ever near”. At a time when the ‘darkness’ falls all around the world in households stricken by Covid-19 (including, now, our own) and in countries oppressed by violence and persecution, the light and peace of Christ that John the Baptist heralded is never more needed.
The framers of the Common Worship “Daily Prayer” orders of service inadvertently created a great demand for settings of this biblical canticle “Benedictus” (and also of “Magnificat”) when they chose to set it as the standard canticle which would finish the service of Morning Prayer every day: originally this was prescribed as mandatory, but in the second edition of the book they backed off this demand and suggested various alternative canticles for different days and seasons: nevertheless, Anglican clergy like me face it on a daily basis as we are supposed to conform to the laid-down services in our daily prayers.
So, seeing as I like to sing canticles rather than say them, I am always on the lookout for different versions of them as hymns – and indeed have written a few myself. And, actually, Benedictus is quite a difficult canticle to set convincingly as a poem to be used as a hymn. It is rather helical in its structure, in that it has several verses that say more-or-less the same thing in different words, so it’s hard to avoid the feeling of going round in circles as one says or sings it (a bit like a bus-ride on a housing estate!). It has an abrupt change of voice in the middle, as it suddenly addresses the child John in the middle of its listing the Lord’s loving acts, and this change of voice is doubly difficult to manage as the child is “MY child” – meaning that there are actually only two people in the world who can sing it (Zechariah and Elizabeth). And it has an ending about tenderness and peace which is hard to make non-anodyne in any translation.
I think Anne Harrison has done a good job with these words. I think “sprung from royal David’s tree” is an excellent imaginative way of finding a rhyme with “free” – a word which is not used in the text but is a great summary of the benefits of redemption and salvation. I think the phrase “life and worship” is a great domain in which liberty is exercised. I like the way she puts the couplet “holiness and righteousness” naturally together in v2 line 5. I think she has done a good job of including the “you my child” lines whilst avoiding the difficulties about how we can sing them if we’re unrelated by blood to John. And I think she manages the “rising sun” and “those who live in the darkness and shadow of death” repetitious conclusion very well.
For me the jury will always be out about whether one should put a Gloria at the end of this kind of canticle. Anne is definitely right that a Gloria isn’t worth eight lines, and her solution, whilst maybe not working with every 8.7.8.7.D tune, is certainly a creative way out of this difficulty. And whilst on the subject of the tune, I think Ian Sharp’s tune is a lot easier to manage than a lot of the newer hymn tunes which get into print nowadays, and I’d encourage singers to have a go with this tune rather than retreat to the more familiar Dim ond Jesu (suggested in the book) or Blaenwern or Hyfrydol which are so often used in these cases.