Introduction
St Luke tells that when Christ was taken from the Apostles’ sight by a cloud on the Mount of Olives, forty days after his resurrection, he promised he would return in the same fashion. In this famous hymn, Charles Wesley waits in keen anticipation for that day.
LO! He comes with clouds descending,
Once for favour’d sinners slain;
Thousand, thousand saints attending,
Swell the triumph of his train;
Hallelujah!* God appears on earth to reign.
Every eye shall now behold him
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at nought and sold him,
Pierced and nail’d him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.
The dear tokens of his passion
Still his dazzling body bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To his ransom’d worshippers:
With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars!
Yea, Amen! let all adore thee,
High on thy eternal throne;
Saviour, take the power and glory;
Claim the kingdom for thine own!
Jah!* Jehovah!* everlasting God! come down.
* ‘Hallelujah’ or alleluia is a Hebrew word meaning ‘praise the Lord!’. The final ‘jah’ is a reference to the divine Name, written as four consonants, without vowels: YHWH or JHVH. It is apparently derived from the name ‘I AM’ that God gave to Moses in Exodus 3:14. ‘Jah’ is thus incomplete, missing the final two consonants; there is a convention that the whole Name is never uttered. The form JAH appears in the Authorised Version at Psalm 68:4.
* ‘Jah’ is a reference to the divine Name, as found at the end of the word ‘hallelujah’ above.
* ‘Jehovah’ is another device to read out the consonants YHWH, the Name of God, without actually naming the Name. Instead of shortening the name, as Jah does, it avoids uttering the unutterable by keeping the consonants but interspersing the vowels of Adonai, meaning ‘My Lord’.
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