Joy to the World

Words: , The Psalms of David, 1719.

Music: Antioch, arranged by , 1836:

The tune is the piecing together of themes in Handel’s Messiah found in the chorus and in the instrumental interludes in “Lift up your heads” and the introduction and interludes of the recitative “Comfort ye.” John Wilson in “Handel and the Hymn Tune: II, Some Hymn Tune Arrangements,” in the January 1986 volume of The Hymn has traced the tune’s origins to A Collection of Tunes, ed. T. Hawkes, 1833, and Voce de Melodia, ed. W[illiam] Holford, ca. 1835. It was popularized in the USA by Lowell Mason who included our version in Occasional Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1836, and for no stated reason named it ANTIOCH (see Henry L. Mason, Hymn-Tunes of Lowell Mason, 1944).

The city of Antioch, Syria, is where believers were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Alternate tune:

Richmond (Haweis), , 1792

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.