‘Joy to the World, the Lord is come!’
Shouldn’t it be, ‘Joy to the World, the Lord has come!’ or ‘Joy to the World, the Lord is here!’
Why the odd tense for this lyric? Please fight my ignorance…
To simplify it: It’s basically because English is a Germanic language.
English these days has just one way of expressing the present perfect tense:
–with “have”
German has two ways of expressing the present perfect tense:
–with “haben,” or “to have”
–with “sein,” or “to be”
Some German words go with haben, others with sein.
The word “kommen” (“come”) always goes with “sein.”
–“Der Herr ist gekommen”–“the Lord is come”
For some time now this structure (with “is”) has been uncommon in English, so when it IS used it sounds archaic, but that’s the basic idea–it’s a leftover the language’s German roots. The farther back you go, the easier it is to find.
So, not a “deep blue sea” question.
Not to you and me, no.
But what about the boys and girls?
Is this archaic form still spoken/understood anywhere on this planet? If not, do I have your permission to update this lyric so that it makes sense to those people that speak modern English?
Well, it’s not like it’s copyrighted or anything.
I never understood a single word, anyway.
It was because of all that fine wine you were drinking.
And it was always mighty fine wine.
Isaac Watts actually wrote Joy to the World for Easter. The use of the verb “is” is in keeping with Jesus’s return from the grave, rather than a prophesied first or second coming of Christ.
It makes sense to me.
If you want to update it, there are a lot of other carols and hymns that are at least as old-fashioned.
People who tweak familiar songs or tunes cause significant frustration to those of us who learned the song in question in childhood.
I grudgingly put up with most tweaks intended to be more inclusive of women-- replacing “men” with “all”.
But I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about “the Lord is come”, and do not recommend that you change it.
FWIW, the “is come” wording [appears many times in the King James Version of the Bible](BibleGateway.com - Keyword Search come%22&version1=KJV&searchtype=all&limit=none&wholewordsonly=no).
Really? Because I think this one is so small that most people wouldn’t even hear it. As a kid, I actually thought it was “has,” but that the H was just hard to hear or that it was a contraction. The only time I have problems with changing lyrics is when it hurts the aesthetics of the poetry.
Still, though I don’t mind the change, I think “is come” and “has come” have different meanings. The former is continual, while the latter is very recent past. “Has come” could mean that the Lord has since left, while “is come” means that he’s still here. With is, come becomes more like an adjective than a verb.
Now, of course, Jesus as a baby is NOT still here, but the idea of the song is that it’s being sung by the angels announcing Jesus’s birth to the shepherds. “Has come” still technically works, but “is come” is more specific and thus more emphatic.
It’s not like it’s hard to understand. I’d think it best to save that sort of reasoning for words like “o’er,” where people probably don’t know what it means (especially when sung).
Yeah, and why don’t you update Shakespeare while you’re at it.
The lady does protest too much!
Oh Romeo, Romeo why are you Romeo?
“Ai! Ai! A balrog! A balrog is come!”
I think we are approaching this question from almost entirely unrelated angles.
As a SINGER-- either in a choir, in a church congregation or as an individual singing along to the radio-- word changes that I am expected to sing along with annoy me. And smaller word changes tend actually to be more annoying than big changes.
If someone just intends to change the words that he sings, and let the rest of the world sing it the traditional way, well, I still kinda think it’s dumb, but I recognize that I have bigger things to worry about.
Oh, I should also admit . . .
Yesterday was the First Sunday of Advent-- I sing in the choir in a church which tries for “blended” worship services. So not super high energy guitar and drums, but few traditional hymns either.
Advent is one of those time when many people become (more) vocal proponents of traditional hymns sung traditionally, as the choir stumbles its way through some song which is 90% traditional and 10% tweaks–like skipping the chorus, or singing the first verse twice, or inexplicable instrumental bits between lines. As a sleep-deprived choir member who agrees with the “Traditional Carols are fun, let’s sing more of them and sing them RIGHT” crowd, I get maybe a little cranky when people propose tweaks for fun or because they don’t understand the traditional versions.
My advice would be to leave the lyric alone, because The Lord has come sounds like he’s ejaculated. YMMV.