I Will Sing To The Eternal

In many Worldwide households the only time television was allowed, during the secular Easter and Christmas seasons, was when either The Ten Commandments or The Sound of Music was on. Above and beyond the broadcast of The World Tomorrow, and the nightly news, that is.

You can’t get much more old testament than this one.

I will sing to the Eternal,
He has triumphed gloriously!
He has stretched out His right hand
and hurled the foe into the sea!
O Eternal, You are my strength,
my song, my great salvation!
The Eternal, He is my God and
I will glorify His Name!

I will chase them and overtake them;
catch them and divide the spoil;
Said the foe, I will destroy them
but the foe drowned in the sea!
O Eternal at Your blast the waters piled up,
tides were dammed!
O Eternal, who is like You, glorious in holiness?

Nations heard of it and trembled;
dread and terror on them fell;
Chiefs of Edom were affrighted;
they all trembled in their fear!
Pharoah’s horsemen and his chariots
sank into the churning sea!
The Eternal led His people over
dry land through the sea!

For anyone who may still harbour doubts that the “judaic god” is being misrepresented by the exegesis of these hymns, I suggest to the reader to sing this hymn in public sometime, and see what kind of reaction they are liable to get.

Definitely not a god you would want to push on children. This hymn was a favourite with the kids in Worldwide, though. Maybe it was the march-like beat, the easy melody, or the picture of a god righting all the wrongs that had been done to its “people”.

We were supposed to, and we did, strongly identify with the Israelites pictured in the old testament. As with most of the hymns, this one was not just a rehash of the movie The Ten Commandments, it was a preview of how the “nations of the world” would view the returning kingdom — and the armageddon that kingdom would bring down on them, for being “the worldly”.

Tags: british-israelism, exodus, judaic god, kingdom of god