Great is the Lord: His praise is great

Written at Peckham in 1970, this version marks the author’s return to regular metre and rhyme after experiments in a freer style, during work towards Psalm Praise where it first appeared. The original draft of stz 3 matched the others: ‘God is the LORD of hosts …’; Christopher Idle was persuaded to move to the present text before publication, and has consequently resisted later requests to change back again. After consciously echoing (in reverse) Julius Caesar’s alleged ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici—I came, I saw, I conquered’ in stz 2, he found that Charles Wesley had done it already with ‘They came, they saw, they fled’. Not all the details of the biblical Psalm can be literal; as ever, those which are point beyond the earthly Zion and Judah. Some editors preferred ‘hostile armies’ at 2.2, but the Praise! group was happier with the original, as retained here; for Satan as the enemy, cf 91B. Doddridge’s Triumphant Zion, lift thy head is an earlier hymn of encouragement which builds on the Psalm; How great is God almighty, Richard Bewes’ words to the tune of 292, have been popular since 1971; while W van der Kamp’s 1972 text (starting with the same 4 words as the Praise! choice) includes for vv12–13, ‘Walk around her citadels,/ count her towers and crenelles …’ (Crenelle = a notch for shooting through!). SIMEON, the author’s preferred tune, appeared c1802 in Twenty-four Tunes in four parts, composed chiefly to Dr Watts’ Psalms and Hymns, published in Birmingham by Samuel Stanley. They included WILTON (862) and WARWICK, still in wide use.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.