“LO, HE COMES” — IS VERSE 2 PROBLEMATIC

Albrecht Dürer, "The Vision of the Seven Candlesticks from the Apocalypse of St. John". Public domain.

It wouldn’t be Advent for me without Charles Wesley’s hymn “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending” sung to the glorious tune Helmsley. While many assume Advent is simply preparation for Christmas, the first Advent, it is also and perhaps more properly focused on the second, when Christ returns to reign, to set all to rights, to complete the redemption of all creation. The hymn describes this glorious consummation for which the first Advent is but the preparation. 

For the past several years, however, as Advent comes round, so too have urgent calls to omit or rewrite the second verse of the hymn:

Ev'ry eye shall now behold him,

Rob'd in dreadful majesty,

Those who set at nought and sold Him,

Pierc'd and nail'd him to the tree,

Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,

Shall the true Messiah see.

Such calls are motivated by the quite correct, much-needed, and long-overdue project of rooting out the evil of antisemitism lurking in Church. In God’s Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian–Jewish Relations, the Church of England’s Faith and Order Commission explains, “It is possible to read [these lines] and imagine they are about the Jewish people as collectively guilty of crucifying the Messiah, who when he comes again in power and glory recognize – too late? – the terrible crime they have committed.” (1)  The Very Rev’d  William H. Petersen goes further, calling the verse patently anti-semitic. (2) 

If this verse as patently anti-semitic as Petersen maintains, then I agree we must omit or rewrite it. But I’m not at all convinced that it is. The verse is simply a metrical version of Rev. 1:7: 

Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.

This passage itself is flush with allusions, especially to Zechariah 12:10 (on which, more anon). The verse does not single out the Jewish people as uniquely responsible for Jesus’ death nor as deserving of special punishment. Christ’s coming is seen by “every eye” and induces grief among “all kindreds.” 

But two additions not found in John’s Apocalypse – “those who set at nought” and “true Messiah” – are sometimes seen as singling out the Jews from among the general multitude so that the thrice-repeated refrain, “deeply wailing” in Peterson’s reading “literally nails the damnation” on them. (3) And, it must be noted, Charles Wesley held extremely anti-semitic views, which – to our great shame – were far from unique among Christians generally. 

When we sing a hymn, however, we are not bound to believe everything the author of the hymn believed. If the sinful prejudices and bad theology of writers excluded their hymns, we’d have a very small hymnal indeed. Rather than dropping the hymns, homilies, and other works of those who held views that, by God’s mercy, we now recognize as wrong and harmful, I rather think we must evaluate each text on its merits. 

We have already seen that Rev. 1:7, the passage of which the second verse of this hymn is a metrical version, does not single out the Jews as a people uniquely, corporately guilty for the crucifixion nor depict them as uniquely punished. The hymn, likewise, concerns “every eye” on the Last Day – that is, all peoples and individuals – and finds us all guilty for Jesus’ death. But what of those bits Wesley added, do they shift the focus narrowly on the Jews? 

The phrase “those who set at nought,” while not found in Rev. 1:7 is used elsewhere in scripture to describe those who rejected Jesus. Wesley probably borrowed the phrase from Acts 4:11, where Peter says to the Sanhedrin: 

Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead…. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (4) 

Peter does focus the Judean religious establishment here, quoting Psalm 118:22. In all three synoptics, Jesus also quotes Psalm 118:22 against the Judean establishment – though not, notably, against all Jews – “But when they [i.e., the religious authorities] sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude [i.e., the people of Jerusalem]” (Mark 12:12). 

Rooting out Christian anti-semitism does not mean the Judeans played no particular part in the execution of Jesus or denying that Jesus is the true Messiah promised to the prophets and patriarchs of Israel. (5) While the Roman authorities crucified Jesus – crucifixion was a uniquely Roman form of political execution for insurrection – Jesus’ rejection by the Judean religious establishment is critical to the Passion narrative. While “those who set at nought” reminds us of the role of the Judean religious authorities, it does not require nor should it be read as some corporate guilt incurred by Jews as such. The text does not single out Jews as uniquely guilty and uniquely subject to punishment. In fact, I think we’d only read “those who set at nought” as a reference to all Jews if we bring that false assumption to the text.  1 Cor. 1:23 demonstrates that both Jews and Gentiles (or rather many people belonging to both groups) set him at nought – “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” 

“Those who set at nought” should remind us of another prophecy too – Isaiah 53. Those who wrongfully “despised and rejected” (v. 3) Christ are also those whose sorrows and iniquities he takes onto himself, bears, and heals (v. 4, 5). This should inform how we read “deeply wailing.” It need not refer to punitive torment inflicted by divine justice. It can and should be read as the wailing of repentance, sorrow for sin. Moreover, the mourning of Zechariah 12:10 leads to reconciliation not a final rejection. The terrors of the Apocalypse also lead to reconciliation: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev. 21:4). Paul’s argument in Romans 9–11 follows a similar trajectory. Paul says his kinsmen “stumbled at that stumbling stone” (9:32) but that does not mean God rejected them as his people – “God forbid” (11:1). On the contrary, his argument builds towards the conclusion, “All Israel shall be saved” (v. 26), “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (v. 29), “For God hath concluded them all [Jews and Gentiles] in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (v. 32), “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (v. 36). 

Singing the second verse of “Lo, he comes” does not lock us into the private beliefs of its author nor involve us in anti-semitism. The meanings of texts are never limited to the intentions of their authors and, in this case in particular, the words are merely a poetic rendering of a scriptural passage. How we interpret the scripture that Wesley set to rhythm and rhyme ought to determine how we understand the hymn. “Those who set at nought and sold Him” includes not only people of two millennia ago, but, crucially, us. We despise and betray him whenever we sin by despising our neighbors and hating our brothers and sisters. When we behold him come in glory, in the Siniatic fire of pure, dreadful holiness, how could we fail to be acutely conscious of that and wail deeply? Jesus’ blood is on us (Matthew 27:5); but, the next verse tells us, “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:8). The third verse transforms the dreadful into the dazzling:

Those dear tokens of his Passion

still his dazzling body bears,

cause of endless exultation

to his ransomed worshippers:

with what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture, 

gaze we on those glorious scars!

Because of that, dreadful though the day will be, we guilty ones pray, “O come quickly!”