Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

Lyrics

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a King,
born to reign in us forever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit
rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine all sufficient merit,
raise us to thy glorious throne.

History

"Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" was written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the Methodist minister and hymn writer whose brother John founded the Methodist movement. Charles published the text in 1744 in his collection Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord, one of several volumes of nativity hymns he produced during the 1740s. The hymn was shaped by Haggai 2:7, with its promise of the "desire of all nations", and by Wesley's wider concern for the poor and displaced of eighteenth-century Britain, whom he saw reflected in the longing of Israel for its promised deliverer.

The original text runs to two stanzas of eight lines each, in 8.7.8.7 metre; many hymnals since have split these into four shorter four-line stanzas to fit tunes composed in that shorter metre. Its theology captures what has been called the "double nature of Advent": the hymn looks back to Christ's first coming as a child at Bethlehem while also looking forward, in its closing plea to "raise us to thy glorious throne", to his promised return. This dual focus - remembrance and expectation held together - has made it one of the most enduring Advent texts in the English-language hymn tradition.

Despite this, the hymn was slow to enter wider use: it was not included in the official Methodist Wesleyan Hymn Book until 1875, reportedly for want of a suitable tune. Its popularity grew substantially after the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon featured it in a Christmas sermon in 1855, and it has since been set to a number of well-known tunes, most commonly STUTTGART (attributed to Christian Friedrich Witt) and HYFRYDOL (by the Welsh composer Rowland Hugh Prichard), alongside others such as CROSS OF JESUS by John Stainer. It now appears in several hundred hymnals and has been translated into multiple languages, remaining a staple of Advent worship worldwide.

Performance

This recording (video id A3DAPyQ65Z0), titled "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus | Worship Song with Lyrics" on the channel, runs 2 minutes 59 seconds and was published in 2023. The video title names no performer or arranger, so none is attributed here.

Sources: hymnary.org · en.wikipedia.org