Musical Notes

Hello OCBC family,
“Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty.” (Psalm 104:1).

In this psalm, like in psalm 103, the psalmist is calling his own soul to bless the Lord, to worship the true God. The psalmist called God great, and pictures him clothed with honor and majesty, a similar picture of the vision of Isaiah, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.” (Isaiah 6:1).

The whole psalm is telling us that our God is the King of the universe, that He is the Ruler of His creation, and that He is the King of kings.

Because of the study about this psalm, Robert Grant wrote the very familiar hymn, “O Worship the King.”

Robert Grant was born in Bengal, India in 1779, and he received his education at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He became a member of the Parliament and served as governor of Bombay (now Mumbai, India).

He was a member of the Anglican Church, with a very evangelical spirit, very devout and a follower of Christ. Being a citizen of the British Empire, he was very familiar with royalty and monarchy, but because he was a true believer, he knew that the real King was Jesus and not William IV.

“O worship the King, all glorious above,
And gratefully sing His wonderful love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.”

Robert Grant used verses 2 and 3 to write the second stanza,

“O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space!
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.”

And my favorite stanza is the last one, with a clear message, the contrast of human weakness with God's unfailing faithfulness.

“Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail:
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.”

Robert Grant, being part of the parliament, he advocated to remove the civil disabilities imposed on Jewish people in Britain.

He was Judge Advocate General in 1832, and his hymn was published in 1833, and he was knighted in 1834. Soon thereafter, he returned to Bombay to be the governor there. He died there on July 9, 1838. He was a knight of the British Empire, a member of the Parliament, governor in India, a medical college was named after him, but now we remember him for the powerful hymn that calls us to worship the King of kings.

In His service,
​
Israel