So yes, cursed with something of a photographic memory when it comes to song lyrics, I know pretty much every word of every verse of every popular Christmas carol. And yet barely three of them make sense. I give you - as a countdown until Christmas, the worst offenders of festive nonsense.
In at number 3: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
Verse One:
O come, O come, Emmanuel!
Redeem thy captive Israel
That into exile drear is gone,
Far from the face of God's dear Son.
Redeem thy captive Israel
That into exile drear is gone,
Far from the face of God's dear Son.
OK, accepting that Emmanuel means God made flesh, or some such guff, the first sentence is OK. Basically "Hello fleshy God!".
"Redeem thy captive Israel"? Well, my knowledge of early Middle Eastern politics is about as strong as my grasp of current Middle Eastern politics, but let's make a basic guess that Israel is under rule by the heathens. Those pesky heathens. Never mind! God is on his way!
"That into exile drear is gone, Far from the face of God's dear son". Sorry? Let's unpick the crappy grammar and word order. Basically, I think it means "dreary stuff has gone into exile, miles away from Jesus." Essentially, Jesus has banished the drear. Jesus is bringing us a massive party. Great. Kind of makes sense so far. Roll on verse two.
O come, thou root of Jesse! draw
The quarry from the lion's claw;
From the dread caverns of the grave,
From nether hell, thy people save.
The quarry from the lion's claw;
From the dread caverns of the grave,
From nether hell, thy people save.
I have genuinely no idea what the "root of Jesse" is. It's either a person or a type of mathematical calculation. Let's go with a person. Jesse. Sounds American. No self-respecting Brit would be called Jesse. Anyway, Jesse's root (his or her son or daughter, perhaps?) is about to attempt something a bit dangerous - apparently stealing food from a lion. Not advised. Unless "draw" in this case means put pencil to paper and do a pretty sketch. But I don't think so.
"From the dread caverns of the grave, from nether hell, thy people save". Jesse's root, whoever he or she is, is going to raise the dead. Possibly in a zombie-esque way. I wonder how this will go down with Jesus and his big party. I'm sensing conflict. Stay tuned, this one's getting exciting. Actually, it isn't. There are about six hundred verses to this*, each one slightly duller than the last.
Translations welcome. Tune in tomorrow for more festive foolishness.
* slight exaggeration
2 comments:
I have done a bit of research (i.e. looked at Wikipedia) and apparently the 'root of Jesse' is basically Jesus. It's root as in 'descendant' and Jesus is a descendant of the family of Jesse.
I think it was originally written in Latin, which explains the funked up word order.
And, Jo is right. "Root of Jesse" is talking about the descendants of Jesse, who was King David's father, and we know that Jesus (by necessity) was descended from David's line.
"Captive Israel" could be a reference to how the Holy Land was seized and the Jews dispersed into the world. But, if we're talking about when Jesus was born...the Holy Land was still captive, and held by the pagan Romans (Christianity wouldn't take hold for another 200 years). The Romans also destroyed the second temple of the Jews, hence "sending the Jews into exile"...
The rest is all representative of what Jesus was supposed to do: have the lion lie down with the lamb, go into hell and save those people who weren't wicked but presumably couldn't go into heaven because they weren't saved by Jesus' blood sacrifice, raise people's spirits from the grave...yadda yadda.
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