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| The Ten Virgins |
It hurts me when we only sing four generic stanzas of this hymn from LSB. It is a hymn with a tune very beloved to those who sing it, a musical setting worthy to lift up the precious jewels of the doctrine in the hymn.
This hymn may be sung on the the Last Sunday of the Church year. Please let me know what you think.
Tune: Ach Gott vom Himmelreiche
1) The Bridegroom soon will call us,
"You wedding guests, come in!"
May slumber not befall us
Nor let us sleep in sin.
Now in our hearts we carry
The lamps and oil and light,
And patiently we tarry
To stand before His sight.
2) Then gone shall be all sadness,
When we see Christ, our God,
Who opened Heaven's gladness
Through suffering and His blood.
The patriarchs will meet us,
The prophets' hold band,
Apostles, martyrs greet us
In that celestial land.
3) They will not blush to own us
As brothers, sisters dear;
Love ever will be shown us
When we with them appear.
We all will come before Him
To share His every good,
As very God adore Him,
Who shares our flesh and blood.
4) Our God will then receive us,
And give us each to own
What earth could never give us -
The victor's golden crown,
And then He will embrace us
With love all Fatherly,
On soul and body grace us
With beauty full and free.
5. In yonder home shall never
Be silent music's voice;
With hearts and lips forever
We shall in God rejoice.
The angels will be singing
All saints will join them too,
Eternal praises bringing,
As it is right to do!
6) To Paradise He'll lead us,
The wedding feast to make,
Rejoicing He will feed us
For His own glory's sake.
Then bliss beyond our knowing
Shall spring from love found true,
From God's own fountain flowing
His mercies ever new.
7. So God shall from all evil
Forever make us free,
From sin and from the devil,
From all adversity,
From sickness, pain and crying,
From gloom, regret and fears,
From sorrow and from sighing,
And wipe away our tears.
8) All glory to the Father,
Whose holy name we bear,
And to His Son, our Brother,
Whose day is drawing near,
When by His Holy Spirit,
(To whom all glory be),
He'll raise us to inherit
His Heaven full and free. Amen.
5 comments:
hold band > ? holy band
Since you didn't provide the German I will have to go look it up to compare. At least it sounds good so far.
St. 1, lines 3-4 still need a better translation. Maybe "God grant no sleep befall us— / The wakeless sleep of sin" but that would require something in line 1 ilke "You wedding-guests, come in!" Anyway, there must be a solution.
St. 2, line 1, perhaps "Gone then will be all sadness" would make more sense with the time difference denoted by "when we see."
St. 3: idea to avoid having the abrupt switch from "with them" to "before Him" without the proper noun Jesus Christ coming between: "As one we will be going / at Jesus' throne to bow, / All praise on Him bestowing, / our flesh who honors now.
St. 5, perhaps end something like "In heav'nly tongues and new." Though you end with "new" in the next stanza. Argh.
St. 6. should really have the tense "He'll lead us…" and the line "die Hochzeit zubereiten" should be clear that it is He preparing the wedding separate from leading us, since only the "wird" is distributed and "zu" is a separable prefix.
7. Wow, here you really are justified in using the old "devil" / "evil" pair. Good work!
Hope this has been helpful.
st. 1
Thanks!
The Bridegroom soon will call us,
"You wedding guests, come in!
My slumber not befall us,
Nor let us sleep in sin!
st. 2
totally disagree
st. 3
I think I will simply change "Christ" to Him. There's nothing wrong with a little anticipation which is resolved in "Who shares our flesh and blood."
st. 5
I could change "eternal praises" to "Their heav'nly praises." But I think it's just gotta stand.
st. 6
To Paradise He'll lead us,
The wedding feast to make,
Where joyfully he feeds us
For his own glory's sake.
Then bliss beyond our knowing...etc.
This gets the "froehlich" in.
The present tense "feeds" is a present vivid, understood as future from the "He'll lead."
7.
That was TLH. This isn't a full translation.
Let me know what you think. I need to get this back to Sutton.
"Present vivid" works in the Gospels, especially in the KJV, and particularly when there is a progression and revelation, and given it reflects the Greek. I'm not sold on it here.
What's your argument for using an imperative (or optative/subj.) in st. 2, l. 1? I think it sounds weird, shifting address like that. Put it in prose: "When we [will, shall] see Christ our God…, be gone, then, O every sadness!" (or, May every sadness then begone!, which is obviously weaker expression.)
I think the other remarks are chiefly attempts to bring out the German, so I leave them as you will.
-MC
I originally had "An end to every sadness / When we see Christ our God." Should I do that?
If there can't be a present vivid in hymnody, then there oughtn't have been on in the Authorized Version of the Bible.
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