“Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Jehovah”
Description
"Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim though this barren land; I am weak, but Thou art mighty.... Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more." The singer asks to be guided by the pillar of fire and to be taken safely to Canaan
Notes
There seems to be some confusion about the origin of this hymn. Every source I checked credits at least some of the words to William Williams. Johnson thinks him the original and sole composer; _Granger's Index to Poetry_ supports this. But the hymnals I checked all consider it a translation of the Welsh "Arglwydd arwain trwy'r Anialwch," with Peter Williams (1722-1796) responsible for some of the translation.
That's nothing to the tune, though. Three different books give three different melodies. Johnson lists his as by Thomas Hastings (1784-1872). The Lutheran hymnal I checked claims a tune written by George W. Warren in 1884. A Methodist hymnal sets it to John Hughes's "Cwm Rhonda." All of these tunes are different. So is Jean Ritchie's; hers is unattributed.
The imagery of the song is strongly reminiscent of the Exodus -- e.g. in Exodus 16:4 God promises "bread from heaven" (the manna which the Israelites ate until they settled in Canaan). The Israelites are led by a pillar of fire at night (Ecxodus 13:21, etc.) There are no crystal fountains in Exodus, or anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, but the idea may have been inspired by the various references to water from a rock.
There is one other Exodus-inspired reference in the song, which is, however, an error. The name "Jehovah" is found in the King James translation of Exodus 6:9 as the (personal) name of God.
Unfortunately, that's not the correct name of God. The proper English consonants are not JHVH but YHVH, and the vowels are simply wrong. Jews eventually came to consider it profane to read the name of God (hence the Greek Bible consistently renders the name YHWH by Kyrios, the Lord, and English versions follow suit for the most part; the King James Bible has only half a dozen exceptions, but Exodus 6:9 is one of them).
To remind scripture readers not to pronounce the name of God (which was pretty definitely YAHVEH or YAHWEH), the Jews eventually started writing the consonants YHWH with the vowels of "adonai," the word for "Lord." What this was supposed to mean was, "When you see YHWH, read 'adonai.'" But the translators of the King James Bible took it literally, and applied the vowels of "adonai" to the consonants of "YHWH" and so produced the barbarism "Jehovah." - RBW
References
- Ritchie-Southern, p. 48, "Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Jehovah" (1 text, 1 tune)
- ADDITIONAL: Charles Johnson, One Hundred and One Famous Hymns (Hallberg, 1982), pp. 94-95, "Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Jehovah" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Roud #7103
- BI, RitS048