Hymns and Hymnwriting     •     Echoes of Creation

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The human experience behind this hymn is expressed in picturesque Biblical language¹. I've tried to follow the Biblical worldview and thought process, in the context of the New Testament and modern experience. I've tried to use modern language while evoking the relevant ancient concepts.

Psalm 29 with its repeated anaphoric² "Voice of the LORD," suggests both a poetic technique, and a cluster of spiritual themes.

The imagery of "God above the waters" reflects a pagan mythological connection of the evil chaos-monster with the sea. This contemporary hymn downplays the allusions to ancient myths.³ But the Biblical approach to those myths is worth analyzing. It is not mere imitation or logical refutation. Sometimes it challenges myths (whether modern and pagan) by focusing on aspects of reality that they cannot compass.

The ancient Phoenician mythology virtually identified the gods with the physical phenomena they controlled. Ba'al was the storm; and the myth of the death of Ba'al⁴ describes the extended droughts⁵ common in the Eastern Mediterranean Littoral. The more anthropomorphic Greek theology distinguished the gods from the storms they created: in Aratus⁶ the gods lose control of the storms as soon as they loose them. But in the context of the Old Testament revelation, the psalmist saw God as both above the storm and controlling it. There may be a connection with Genesis 1 and 2; which to the Christian in turn suggests John 20:22 and 2 Peter 3 (expanded in the hymn.)

But this is not the Iron Age; the cosmos that we experience has expanded. Have we completely outgrown that ancient image of God? The hymn argues that our awe of God's power ought to expand with our concept of God's creation, but God's revelation still shows how we might express our own awe. I think the psalmist would have appreciated such an attempt to bring his metaphors into our cosmos.

This hymn extend the psalm's metaphor into the modern scientific world. In the last year, space probes have provided memorable views of storms on other planets.⁷ This is only the latest step in an exploration of space that began in the time of Galileo⁸. Galileo also began the unification of geography and cosmology; ever since then, this unified view has driven progress in the physical sciences.

But the scientific mindset also has limitations. The analogy^8a of God as "the great Clockmaker" emphasizes the orderly systems⁹ underlying Isaac Newton's gravitational model as well as contemporary scientific achievements. But as we probe deeper into meteorology and cosmology, we face more and more random systems. God is truly the One who brings order out of chaos; he is equally truly the One who glories in systems so complex that they can only be perceived as chaotic. This understanding is surely close to the psalmist's vision. In this new millenium it is especially fitting that we recognize God in this aspect of creation.

So far, the hymn is no more than a praise of the Creator; stanza three introduces the moral dimension. Inside the metaphorical perspective of the psalm, it juxtaposes Genesis and John; outside the metaphor, it combines theological and functional language. In this, I'm deliberately imitating St. Patrick's famous blessing¹⁰, which combines in each line a metaphorical and a functional expression.

Stanza four turns to the realm of communication, exploiting the wordplay¹¹ that hovers in the background of the various biblical contexts. It combines mythical, metaphorical and functional descriptions of the effects of God's communication. But it is all the same Voice¹².

Frequently in both Old and New Testaments, the storm is a metaphor for impending judgment, so the shift of subject in stanza five is thoroughly biblical. But the metaphor doesn't shift: the stanza is still focusing on God's communication. In That Day, Then, God's spoken Word will perform three functions: proclamation of judgment; sentencing; and undoing the Word of Creation. But before then, its purpose is to prepare us for the Day. So the hymn has led up to a description of these works -- from both metaphorical and functional perspectives. With that in mind, the stanza virtually wrote itself: and each phrase is lifted almost verbatim from some familiar Biblical verse. When a work achieves closure like this, I feel that the basic approach has been validated.

Music

The theme from Sibelius' tone poem "Finlandia" is widely used as a hymn tune: That is no surprise: it was written as an imitation of a Finnish-language chorale tune. It somehow seems especially appropriate here. Many of Sibelius' works include programs suggesting that they were inspired by nature. A choral work "Oma maa" [Our Native Land]" expresses the glory of the Northern lights. In the national monument dedicated to Sibelius, there is a memorial sculpture described as "an airy, free shape suggestive of a birch forest or the Northern Lights".

Metrically, the opening four notes of the tune emphasize the reiterated words of the stanza. The tune intruded itself fairly early in composition of the poem, shaped its meter, and even helped me resolve several problems in the rhyme scheme.

Use:

The full hymn is perhaps too long, and probably too complex, for common use¹³, but the interwoven threads make several distinct centos of interest, at least partly because each brings out a different set of connections with its own distinct inherent focus.

• Stanzas 1, 3, 4, 5 form an integrated Biblical picture, to which stanza 2 may well be considered optional.
• Verses 1, 2, 4, and 5 specifically speak of the effect of God's word on the universe; so combinations of them (consider 1,2,4,5 or 1,2,4 or 1,4,5) exhibit a unity (but each combination presents a slightly different perspective).
• Verses 3, 4, and 5 speak of the effect of God's word on humans, and together form a coherent whole.

I had not contemplated all of this before I wrote the text; that alone is a justification for writing it.

Notes

¹Besides Psalm 29, compare Psalm 18 and Habbakkuk 3 (which has often been used as a "psalm outside the Psalms", or "canticle"). But in this context consider also the meteorological phenomena that are an integral part of the sky visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and John.

²In rhetoric, "anaphora" is deliberate repetition of the same words or sounds at the beginning of successive speech units. (Here, the speech units are stanzas of poetry; in Ascribe to Jehovah, they are lines within a stanza.) It can be an effective device for emphasizing a connection between a series of clauses, or for building and holding tension.
Hebrew poetry hardly ever exhibits patterns of rhyme, but anaphora is common in Hebrew poetry and prose: Consider Psalms 13, 44, 96, 118, 119 (single letter only), 148, 150; the ten commandments, the beatitudes, and Amos's prophecy against the nations of the Levant.
To illustrate the ubiquity of this technique in hymns, a few minutes' review in a single hymnal turned up these seven notable examples representing seven different centuries and four different languages: St. Patrick's Be thou my vision, William Ken's doxology Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, Frances Havergal's Take my life, and let it be; Fred Pratt Green's God is here, as we his people; Ambrose of Milan, O trinity of blessed light; Wesley's Come, thou long-expected Jesus, John Tauler's As the bridegroom to his chosen.

³See also my article on Mythological Language in the Psalms.

⁴Isaiah 14 contains an extended allusion to this myth, recently recovered from the Ugaritic libraries. Isaiah (verse 4) thought the literal referent was the downfall of the (human) King of Babylon. (The bizarre notion relating this passage to the origin of Satan has no basis in either logic, linguistics, history, theology, or astrology.)

⁵Thus the poignancy of Elijah's challenge to the pagan prophets in I Kings 18. A similar idea is reflected in the old Greek theological joke: "There is no Zeus." "Then -- who's raining?"

⁶The philosopher quoted in Paul's speech at the Areopagus in Athens.

⁷Galileo recorded the first observations of sunspots. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter, the greatest known planetary storm, was first observed by his contemporary Cassini.

⁸Galileo's dispute with church authorities is widely known and almost as widely misunderstood. The commonly cited issue (the solar system model) was a minor side issue--both mathematically irrelevant and philosophically insignificant. The more serious issue was his multifold and devastating attack on the standard (Aristotelian) philosophy of the day, which considered the heavens perfect and unchangeable, completely different from earthly matter.

^8aWe might as well call it a "myth": and that not disparagingly but respectfully.

⁹Understandably so, since those were the ones that could be analyzed mathematically at the time.

¹⁰E.g., "Be in my mind, and in my understanding", "be in my ears, and in my hearing," etc. One writer notes that the functional expression is likely to shock people who will placidly swallow the metaphor: this ought not so to be.

¹¹I.e. "pneuma" = "wind" or "spirit"; ruach = "soul" or "breath" or even "voice". The Gospel of John frequently exploits polysemy, and perhaps no example is more common than this.

¹²Heb. 12:25-27; 2 Pet 3:5-7.

¹³I'm probably being presumptious in assuming that it could actually be used. But this kind of analysis could apply to any psalm or hymn attempting such a broad synthesis.

This text, © Stephen Hutcheson, 2004, and offered freely for use under a Creative Commons License. These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas