It has become trendy in recent years to publicly proclaim that Joy to the World was not originally written as a song about Christ’s First Coming, but rather was composed as a forward-looking celebration of Christ’s future Second Coming. Have you encountered this assertion? See, for example, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE — a few examples among many.

Now, except for a few curmudgeons out there, I don’t think most people question whether we should sing Joy to the World at Christmas time. But the challenge being posed is a historical one: What did Isaac Watts intend when he penned the lyrics to Joy to the World?

As far as I can determine, nowhere in his other writings did Watts comment on the meaning of his lyrics. This means that the recent opinion that it is a song about Christ’s Second Coming (rather than his First) is based solely upon the words of the song itself. But I can think of five reasons to affirm that the song is primarily about the First Coming of Christ,[1] even if the culmination of some of the hopes represented in the song will only fully and finally be realized in the future. The five reasons for viewing this song as primarily about the First Coming are as follows: 1) “The Lord is come” is an unusual grammar construction for a future Second Coming of Christ. 2) The song is a Christological interpretation of Psalm 98 and must be understood within its compositional setting. 3) The song contains quite a few allusions to Christ’s First Coming. 4) The arguments for the Second-Coming position are inconclusive. 5) Nobody until very recently (that I know of) questioned whether this was a First-Coming song.

But first, what are some reasons used to argue that Joy to the World was originally written exclusively about the Second Coming of Christ? The anti-First-Coming argument, as far as I can tell, is based entirely on the lyrics themselves. So let me reproduce the original lyrics here, including original capitalization and punctuation.[2]

Joy to the World; the Lord is come;
Let Earth receive her King:
Let every Heart prepare him Room
And Heaven and Nature Sing

Joy to the Earth, The Savior reigns;
Let Men their Songs employ;
While Fields & Floods, Rocks, Hills & Plains
Repeat the sounding Joy.

No more let Sins and Sorrows grow,
Nor Thorns infest the Ground;
He comes to make his Blessings flow
Far as the Curse is found.

He rules the World with Truth and Grace,
And makes the Nations prove
The Glories of his Righteousness,
And Wonders of his Love.

But first, what are some reasons used to argue that the song is not about Christ’s First Coming, but rather about his future Second Coming — all from the lyrics themselves?

1. The whole earth did not receive Jesus as King at the First Coming. (“Let earth receive her king.”)

2. Sins, sorrows, and thorns continued to be a problem after the First Coming (“No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.”)

3. Jesus did not set up a kingdom from which he ruled on the earth, and the nations of the world do not glorify him. (“He rules the world…and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness.”)

But these arguments are inconclusive, as will soon become evident. Let’s look at five reasons that Isaac Watts likely wrote this song primarily about the First Coming of Christ:

1. The Lord is come in the first line of the song is an unusual grammar form if it points to a future Second Coming. This grammar construction (simple present passive indicative) appears to have been popular for quite a while before and after the time of Isaac Watts. At the time he wrote, it was close in meaning to the Lord has come. Even a hundred years after Watts wrote the words “the Lord is come,” Jane Austen has her character, Lydia, exclaim to Charlotte, “I am glad you are come…” just as Charlotte arrives.[3] If someone insists that “the Lord is come” could still be about the Second Coming, that person would have to argue that this line is backward looking from the perspective of a time after the Second Coming, which is possible in poetry, but unusual.

2. Watts did not write this song simply out of his head; he penned a poetic “imitation” of Psalm 98. We know that Joy to the World was just such an imitative paraphrase because Watts published the song in a hymn book in which he composed an interpretive paraphrase of every psalm following the order of the 150 psalms found in the biblical book of Psalms. (More on the volume title of that Psalm-based hymnbook below). Joy to the World is the song that appears under Psalm 98. For reference, here is the entire Psalm (in the King James Version, from which Watts primarily worked[4]):

Psalm 98:1 O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.
2 The Lord hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen.
3 He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
4 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
5 Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.
6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King.
7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
8 Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together
9 Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

Watts was not, however, trying to replicate the meaning of Psalm 98 — as a way of poetically restating what the Psalmist was reflecting in his own historical moment — which would have been something about God rescuing his people and asserting his rule over the world. Watts’s goal, rather, was to adapt Psalm 98, using a Christological mindset.[5] This means that he was viewing and portraying the Psalm from a Christian perspective with a focus on Jesus, as Watts himself once commented in general about his Psalms project: “as we have reason to believe David would have compos’d ‘em if he had lived in our Day.”[6]

Apart from the actual words of the song, which are situated in Watts’s hymn book at Psalm 98 and are filled with Christological ideas, there are a couple other telling reasons. First, the title of the hymn in the original songbook (connected to Psalm 98) is: The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.[7] This is the title just above the lyrics of Joy to the World. “The Messiah’s Coming” in the singular seems much more likely to be a reference to the First Coming of Jesus.

This line of thought receives additional support when we observe that the title of the volume in which this song is found (a volume where Watts wrote songs based upon given psalms) is: The Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, And apply’d to the Christian State of Worship. In other words, these songs are Watts’s “imitation” of these Psalms using “the language of the New Testament.”

Also, on the cover of the same volume that sports the aforementioned title are the words from Luke 24:44 “All things must be fulfilled which were written in — the Psalms concerning me.” This is another way of communicating that this volume is Watts’s Christological interpretation of the Psalms.

To make Joy to the World entirely a song about the Second Coming misses its situatedness as a “Christian” song about Psalm 98 with a title connecting it to the Messiah’s (first) coming and kingdom, and in a book that explicitly claims that such psalms are written as Christian imitations of the New Testament.

3. There are verbal allusions to the New Testament in the song that indicate that it was written about the First Coming of Christ. Watts lived in an age when people knew their Bibles well, but Watts’s songs were particularly saturated in biblical allusions. In the case of Joy to the World, these allusions point toward Christ’s first coming.

Paying attention to such verbal allusions makes sense, since, as I have already mentioned, the song was first published in Watts’s 1719 collection, The Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, And apply’d to the Christian State of Worship. Notice the words “in the Language of the New Testament.” In other words, it is a reworking of a psalm (Psalm 98) — along with other psalms — that includes the language of the New Testament. So where are the New Testament verbal allusions in the song?

Allusion #1: “Let every heart prepare him room.” This alludes to Luke 2:7: “there was no room for them in the inn,” a strong indicator of the First Coming.

Allusion #2: “While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains…” When Watts drew upon Psalm 98, he already had the words “floods” and “hills” at his disposal in Psalm 98. He poetically filled in the list with three other biblical words, all loaded with First-Coming significance.

  • “Fields”: Luke tells us that “there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” when an angel of the Lord announced the birth of Christ (Luke 2:8).

  • “Rocks”: At the triumphal entry, Jesus said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).

  • “Plains”: Isaiah predicted the coming of John the Baptist: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (Isa 40:3-4; Luke 3:4-6; cf. Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; John 1:23).

All three words — that is, the words that didn’t already appear in Watts’s source text, Psalm 98 — evoke the First Coming of Christ.

Allusion #3: the word “repeat,” as in “repeat the sounding joy.” The angels must have repeated the line “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Otherwise, the entire encounter with the shepherds only took four seconds, since this is how long it takes to speak this sentence once.) In other words, the angels repeated the sounding joy.

Allusion #4: the word “joy.” Joy, of course, is the most important word in Joy to the World. “Joy” evokes the angel’s words in Luke 2:10: “And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.’” But it is not only in Luke 2:10 that joy is important; it is a significant theme throughout Luke, especially in the birth narrative: in the announcement of the angel to Zechariah (1:14), when the baby John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb (1:44), in Mary’s song (1:47), in the jubilation of the shepherds after seeing the baby Jesus (2:20), and in the response of the elderly prophetess, Anna, in the temple (2:38).

These allusions collectively point toward a primarily First-Coming context for the song.

4. The arguments against this being a First-Coming song are inconclusive, particularly since they are based entirely upon the words of the song itself. The song in its own context does not seem to say what people are claiming that it is saying.

  • It doesn’t say that the whole earth will receive Jesus as king in the future. It’s a current invitation for the earth to receive him as king (“Let earth receive her king.”)

  • It doesn’t say that sins, sorrows, and thorns will be done away with in the future. It appears to be a call for sins and sorrows and even thorns to be overcome through Christ’s work in the present age (“No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.”). The reference to thorns, anyway, is a backward-looking allusion to the curse on the ground in Genesis 3:17-19, a passage that itself is alluded to in Hebrews 6:7-8 (notice “thorns and thistles” in both passages — that is, in a New Testament context just after the First Coming).

  • Even “He rules the world” (verse 4) does not conclusively point toward the Second Coming alone, since Jesus’s kingdom rule has already commenced in some form. Furthermore, during the current spread of the gospel, some among the nations are proving the glories of his righteousness and experiencing the wonders of his love. Moreover, most of the “He rules the world” verse seems to be a reworking of the words of Psalm 98, especially verse 9. It does not have to be read exclusively as a forward-looking anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ, though we know the culmination of Christ’s rule is still something coming in the future.

5. Finally, as far as I can tell, no one until recently ever questioned whether this was a song about Christ’s First Coming. Once again, I could be wrong about this — and like everything else in this article, I would be happy to be corrected if I have made an error. But we normally ought to hesitate before accepting and publicizing novel ideas until sound arguments persuade us that a new position is more likely than an old one.

Once again, I grant that I might be missing something, especially if Watts himself wrote comments about this song that I’m not aware of. But until I am shown otherwise, I will continue to treat Joy to the World as a song that has as its primary focus rejoicing in the First Coming of Christ.

Notes

[1] Technically, Joy to the World isn’t even a Christmas song, that is, if you are thinking only about the birth of Christ; it is a song primarily focused on Christ’s incarnation taken as a whole—Christ’s First Coming. In Watts’s ecclesial setting, he didn’t celebrate Christmas and Easter. But along with other Calvinistic Independents, Watts still rejoiced in the incarnation of Christ, which is reflected in his verses. I’m indebted to David Music for this observation (personal correspondence, November 1, 2024). See further on this: David W. Music, Repeat the Sounding Joy: Reflections on Hymns by Isaac Watts (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2020), 136-137. (See all of ch. 14, “Joy to the World; the Lord is Come for other helpful perspectives on this hymn.)

[2] The repetition of the final line of each stanza was added in the 19th century when Watts’s verses were combined with the tune we all sing to Joy to the World today. Watts did not compose and never would have known this tune.

[3] The Novels of Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice Volume 1 (Edinburgh: John Grant, reprint 1905), 171.

[4] David W. Music, Studies in the Hymnody of Isaac Watts, Studies in Religion and the Arts 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 32.

[5] J. R. Watson. The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 152-154.

[6] Quoted in Music, Studies in the Hymnody of Isaac Watts, 32.

[7] I. Watts, The Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, And apply’d to the Christian State of Worship (London: J. Clark, H. Ford, and R. Cruttenden, 1719), 253. Accessed HERE.

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