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Based on Isaiah 53, this is a cleverly written song for four voices and piano. Actually, there are only two different voices singing at any one time, so it's very easy to learn!

Richard Powell

Based on Isaiah 53, this is a cleverly written song for four voices and piano. Actually, there are only two different voices singing at any one time, so it's very easy to learn!

Richard Powell

Based on Isaiah 53, this is a cleverly written song for four voices and piano. Actually, there are only two different voices singing at any one time, so it's very easy to learn!

Richard Powell

No-one is sure about who the original author of this song was.  It is accompanied in the original manuscript by just the letter ‘K’.  It appears in ‘A Se­lect­ion of Hymns from the Best Au­thors’, by John Rip­pon (1787).  It could be Richard Keen, Robert Keen, John Keene, John Kirkham, John Keith.  What is known for definite is that I (Richard Simpkin) didn’t write the words.  Unfortunately, sometimes when this song is used, the words are attributed to me, but my command of the English language could never come up to the standard set in this song.

I came to write a new tune to this song because of a deadline.  I meet with Michael Lawson (Archdeacon of Hampstead, and ex-concert pianist) from time to time, who gives me very helpful guidance on the musical side of things.  The next date in the diary was looming and I had nothing to offer.  I’d been encouraging our group of song writers to focus on the prophets, so I looked in an old service preparation book to see if there were any old hymns from the prophets that needed new tunes.  I find writing tunes a lot easier than words, so I fancied saving a lot of time!

In the section on Isaiah, ‘How firm a foundation’ kept on cropping up, and I realised how steeped the song is in Isaiah 43-48.

What I like especially about the words is the way the writer proclaims truth from our mouths and then from God’s, a device that is commonly used in the Psalms.  Modern updates have tried to iron this out, but I think that we lose the weight of the repetitions: ‘I, I am your God’, and, ‘I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.’  It is a powerful thing to be able to sing the promises of God to each other.

I remembered singing the words to the tune, ‘Montgomery’ and felt that maybe a new colour would bring some of the words to life.  It’s a simple tune which seems easy to pick up, and should work with anything from a solo instrument to a full band.

Richard Simpkin

The writer of these words was a member of our congregation, and wrote the song to accompany a sermon series on the book of Isaiah, from which many of the images are drawn (for example, the ‘wings of eagles’ of Isaiah 40:31, and the ‘bruised reed’ of Isaiah 42:3).  The song is structured around different aspects of the ‘word’ (variously ‘consolation’, ‘vindication’, ‘dereliction’).  This word is neither vainly spoken, nor empty to return (Isaiah 55:11).  The song speaks of the loving purposes of God to an exiled wayward people, specifically through the work of the suffering servant, who will speak the ‘word of dereliction’ from the cross (Matthew 27:46) and bear his people’s sin.  It was originally written to the tune of ‘The church’s one foundation’, which is optimistic in tone but a shade too ‘matter of fact’ for this subject matter, particularly in verse four.  I wanted a more reflective contemporary tune.  The break before the ‘word’ is sung in the second bar of each verse is intended to create a dramatic pause before the particular ‘word’ is announced, and thus to give it further emphasis.

Richard Powell

I started writing this song moulded around the various commands/invitations which appear in Isaiah 55 – Come and drink, listen, seek, delight etc.  Noticing the ‘For’ in verse 8 drew me to starting the song there instead of with verse 1.  This way the song starts with the nature of God himself, so that the invitations arise from knowing the majestic ‘otherness’ of God.

The chorus posed a problem.  I wanted to give the opportunity for a personal response to those invitations, while at the same time proclaiming God’s sure intention to accomplish his purpose through his Word (Isaiah 55:10-11).  Having used the first 2 line of the chorus to give the response, ‘I will trust, I will turn’, I had 2 lines to explain that ‘as the rain an the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.’ (ESV).  Condensing all this richness into 2 short lines isn’t ideal, and it took me longer to write those lines than the whole of the rest of the song, but I hope that they catch the main point of those famous verses.

If I’m writing both words and music, I always write the words first.  This isn’t because there’s any rule about what should be written first.  I would simply rather let the shape of the tune be governed by the words rather than the other way round.

Richard Simpkin

Isaiah 26 is one of those great "in that day" visions found throughout the prophetic books, describing the promises of God fulfilled in a glorious city.  The chapter is full of strikingly unusual and beautifully poetic lines, and I wondered if I could capture some of them in a song.  But applying the chapter consistently is not a simple matter!  It is often the case with biblical prophecies that there are several levels of increasing fulfilment: historically in the political rebuilding of Jerusalem after the exile, then spiritually as Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom of God and draws us in, then eternally as we finally experience the glorious new creation - described in Revelation as a city, the New Jerusalem.  In the song I have chosen the last, eternal fulfilment, because I think it brings the whole chapter together for us:  we too experience the longing for the joy that awaits us in that day.

Simon Pedley

I'd been studying Isaiah, and looked there for inspiration during a weekend away for songwriters.  I should fess up: my original intention was to avoid chapter 53 as there are already some excellent songs based on it!  But it's hard to help being drawn to the crystal-clear and gut-wrenchingly powerful prophecy of the suffering servant.  I think it's the clearest description of substitutionary atonement anywhere in the Bible, where we see Jesus bearing the wrath of God for our sins in his death, before rising triumphantly to lead us, his newly-justified servants, into glory.  Isaiah 53 is the culmination of several other "servant songs", and I wanted to draw in some of the earlier material from chs 42 and 49, and make the whole song a cry of praise addressed to Jesus.

Simon Pedley