[20] 86 Tell Out My Soul, The Greatness Of The Lord

‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!
---Powers and dominions lay their glory by;
Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,
---The hungry fed, the humble lifted high.’

There are many ‘songs’ in the Bible. There’s the Song of Solomon, the song of Moses, the Song of the Well, the Last Words of David (also known as the Favourite Song of David) and, of course, the Psalms. This carol is a setting of the Magnificat; Mary’s song in Luke 1:46-55, which we looked at from a gender perspective in [11] 87 The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came. Far from sticking to the text, lyricist Timothy Dudley-Smith bends certain bits to keep to metre and rhyme, and also he magnifies (sorry for the pun…) Mary’s reference to her soul, by wording it as ‘tell out, my soul’. This conjures an over-flowing, bursting image, as if her/our hearts are so swelled by joy that we can’t help but sing.

I want to draw your attention to another song in the Bible, that of Hannah, in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. Have a quick read and you’ll instantly see the parallel between this and the Magnificat. Hannah, who was barren, asked the High Priest Eli to grant her a child whom she would devote entirely to God. Her wish was granted, and on the occasion of her presenting her child Samuel to the priest, she sings her song. Much like the Magnificat, Hannah’s Song deals primarily in the inversion of status; ‘The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.’ (1 Samuel 1:4-5). Her main point is that she who was barren has now given birth, through the Lord’s mercy. Does that make Jesus the new Samuel? Yes, to some extent. Luke wants us to connect the two in our minds (remember that he probably put lyrics in Mary’s mouth after the event, since he didn’t witness it, since he was possibly quite busy being born himself…), and indeed Jesus is compared with and connected to many other Old Testament characters. Perhaps a more direct connection would be Samuel and John the Baptist, because both of their mothers (Hannah and Elizabeth) were said to have been barren.

God’s work is to turn everything upside down; to right wrongs; to forgive sins; to topple kings and lift up the oppressed. Jesus is a shining example of a theme that runs throughout the Bible: a radical idea of destruction of constructed hierarchies, of liberation. The two women whose songs we are considering are sending us a political and personal message of freedom; how apt that they are female, given the oppression at the time! The fact that they have been remembered for this idealistic stance is liberating in itself.

Can you think of a place in your life where a wrong needs righting? Where a king needs toppling? Where a hungry person needs feeding? Where a table needs throwing over in a temple? Christmas may just be the perfect time for that. Let’s set our ‘proud hearts and stubborn wills’ to flight these coming days, so that we might lift the humble high. Thanks be to God!