Phill Sacre

Tag: carols

  • O Come, O Come Emmanuel: Meaning

    O Come, O Come Emmanuel: Meaning

    It’s been a while since I last posted in my occasional ‘hymnology’ series, where I look at the meaning of Christian hymns. You can see the previous ones under the hymnology tag. Seeing as it’s Advent Sunday, I thought it might be worth looking at the popular Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

    It’s a beautiful, haunting hymn – but what does it really mean?

    If you want to understand O Come, O Come Emmanuel – you need to understand the Old Testament. The hymn draws heavily on the Old Testament, and you can’t talk about the meaning without it.

    Biblical Background: Israel and exile

    The first verse of the hymn begins:

    O come, O come, Emmanuel,
    And ransom captive Israel,
    That mourns in lonely exile here

    The fundamental thing to understand here is exile.

    Let’s take a very brief history of the people of Israel through the Bible:

    1. God promised Abraham that he would eventually have his own land. You can read about that in Genesis 12:1-3.
    2. The people of Israel ended up as slaves in Egypt, so God rescued them and promised to bring them into “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8).
    3. Before they entered the Promised Land, Moses warned them that if they disobeyed: “The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors” (Deuteronomy 28:36).
    4. They did take possession of the Promised Land – the land of Israel – and you can read about that in the book of Joshua.
    5. However, because of their disobedience, eventually they were conquered by Assyria and Babylon and taken into captivity. This is what is meant by exile.
    6. The people did eventually return from exile – you can read about that in Ezra and Nehemiah.

    In a nutshell, when God’s people were in exile, they were away from the Promised Land. They were awaiting the day when they would be able to return.

    Christians and Exile

    All that happened to the Israelites. But what relevance does that have for modern day Christians? And why does O Come, O Come Emmanuel talk about things which happened long ago?

    Interestingly, the New Testament book of 1 Peter picks up the theme of exile and applies it to Christians. The book begins: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles, scattered throughout the provinces…”. So Peter addresses Christians as exiles. Why?

    It’s all because of a concept called ‘typology’. This basically means that things which happened in the Old Testament prefigure or foreshadow things in the New Testament. Peter is saying that there is something about the Old Testament exile which applies to Christians.

    What this means is that the situation of the Old Testament nation of Israel is analogous to Christians today: we, too, are not living in the Promised Land. We’re here because we as the human race disobeyed God – because of the Fall (which happened in Genesis 3).

    Of course, for Christians, the details are different: the Promised Land is the New Creation. The one holding us captive is not the Babylonians or Assyria, but Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). There are differences! But Peter says that, nonetheless, in a sense we are in exile.

    The key thing is, does that help us to make sense of the hymn?

    O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Exile

    Let’s return to the hymn and see if the theme of exile helps us to make sense of it.

    Verse 1 and chorus

    The first verse of the hymn finishes off:

    Until the Son of God appear.

    Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
    Shall come to thee, O Israel.

    We are in exile until the Son of God appears. This is what the Bible says: we will not reach our Promised Land – the new creation – until Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. But the good news is, we can rejoice – our comfort in this dark world is that Jesus will return and come to us.

    Verse 2 and onwards

    O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
    Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
    From depths of hell Thy people save,
    And give them victory o’er the grave.

    As we’ve already seen, Satan is the one holding this world in slavery to sin. The ‘rod of Jesse’ is a reference to Isaiah 11:1 (‘rod’ is the way it was translated in the King James version; these days modern translations go for a ‘shoot’). It’s basically saying that Jesus, as the descendant of King David, would come and free us from Satan.

    Jesus, Son of God, would save us from the claims of hell and death (Hebrews 2:15). Although we are living in exile, we need have no fear of the future because we know that all those in Christ are secure.

    The rest of the hymn is basically a variation on the same theme. Jesus is the one who saves us from our sins (Matthew 1:21). He has defeated Satan and death. He rescues us from exile and leads us into the promised land.

    Interesting fact: Joshua led the people into the Promised Land in the Old Testament. Joshua and Jesus are basically the same name – Joshua is the Hebrew version, and Jesus is the Greek version. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Like I said – typology!

    In a nutshell

    In a nutshell, then, O Come O Come Emmanuel is saying that Christians today are living in exile. We’re not in the Promised Land. Although Jesus has and defeated sin at the cross, we still await the final judgement, where all evil will be destroyed. Until then, we have to deal with a dark world, where sin and death still exist. And yet, we have hope that one day Christ will return, lead us into the Promised Land of the new creation, and destroy death, sin, and Satan forever.

    Bonus…

    Here’s a version of the song recorded by Belle & Sebastian:

  • Hymnology: Away in a manger

    I’m going to level with you right of the bat: I’m not a fan of Away in a manger. It’s too romanticised, too cute for me. I think I did like it as a child, but as an adult – not so much. However, I have an issue with the carol itself which is beyond merely a matter of style – I think it flirts with heresy. The offending lines are these:

    The cattle are lowing
    The baby awakes
    But little Lord Jesus
    No crying He makes

    What’s the problem with that? I know a little about babies, and I know that babies do cry. Quite a lot. There’s nothing wrong with crying – in fact, if a baby didn’t cry you’d be more worried. What I don’t like about this verses is that it suggests that Jesus was somehow not a ‘real’ human baby – he wasn’t a proper baby, he was some kind of ‘super-spiritual’ baby. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I do remember wondering as a child whether this implied that Jesus was different to other children.
    The idea that Jesus was not a real human being is an ancient one, and it is a heresy known as doceticism (from the ancient Greek dokeo, which means to seem or appear – Jesus only appeared to be human). This is a very early heresy – in fact the apostle John writes about it in 1 John 4:2-3 – “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.” Evidently some in the church John was writing to were teaching that Jesus had not come ‘in the flesh’.
    So I’d like to use the opportunity to outline why it’s important that Jesus Christ came as a real human baby and not some heavenly apparition who just happened to look human. Irenaeus, a Bishop of the early church, wrote against doceticism. Here’s an except from one of his writings – Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching:

    The Son of God became Son of David and Son of Abraham; perfecting and summing up this in Himself, that He might make us to possess life. The Word of God was made flesh by the dispensation of the Virgin, to abolish death and make man live. For we were imprisoned by sin, being born in sinfulness and living under death. […]
    Now, if He was not born, neither did He die; and, if He died not, neither did He rise from the dead; and, if He rose not from the dead, neither did He vanquish death and bring its reign to nought; and if death be not vanquished, how can we ascend to life, who from the beginning have fallen under death? So then those who take away redemption from man, and believe not God that He will raise them from the dead, these also despise the birth of our Lord, which He underwent on our behalf, that the Word of God should be made flesh in order that He might manifest the resurrection of the flesh, and might have pre-eminence over all things in the heavens, as the first-born and eldest offspring of the thought of the Father, the Word, fulfilling all things, and Himself guiding and ruling upon earth. For He was the Virgin’s first-born, a just and holy man, god fearing, good, well-pleasing to God, perfect in all ways, and delivering from hell all who follow after Him: for He Himself was the first-begotten of the dead, the Prince and Author of life unto God

    I appreciate this is not a simple passage and takes a little getting your head around. But I think the argument is quite straightforward.
    The reason Jesus came was to save mankind from sin and death and to give life. Now, if Jesus wasn’t born – a genuine human birth – then he did not die a genuine human death. If he didn’t die, then he didn’t rise again, and if he didn’t rise again then he has not destroyed death. If death is not destroyed – then how can we gain eternal life?
    Jesus had to become like us in order to save us. That’s the whole point. Jesus had to take upon himself human flesh to bring human flesh to God. Athanasius makes a similar point in On the Incarnation – only a man could identify with mankind and be united with them; only God could bring people to God. In Jesus, the God-man, fully man and fully God, we have the only one who is able to bring mankind to God.
    So, this Christmas – and, indeed, all year round – it’s good to rejoice that Jesus was really and truly God, and really and truly human. One carol which does do a lot better in this regard is Once in Royal David’s City (apart from having a quibble with the line ‘Christian children all must be / mild, obedient, good as He’…):

    For he is our childhood’s pattern;
    Day by day, like us He grew;
    He was little, weak and helpless,
    Tears and smiles like us He knew;
    And He feeleth for our sadness,
    And He shareth in our gladness.

    Jesus Christ was really human, like us. He knew tears and smiles, he can sympathise with us. This is the message which this beautiful video picks up on: