Lyrics
Comfort, comfort ye My people,
Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
Comfort those who sit in darkness,
Mourning 'neath their sorrows' load;
Speak ye to Jerusalem
Of the peace that waits for them,
Tell her that her sins I cover,
And her warfare now is over.
Yea, her sins our God will pardon,
Blotting out each dark misdeed;
All that well deserved His anger
He will no more see nor heed.
She hath suffer'd many a day,
Now her griefs have passed away,
God will change her pining sadness
Into ever-springing gladness.
For Elijah's voice is crying
In the desert far and near,
Bidding all men to repentance,
Since the kingdom now is here.
Oh, that warning cry obey,
Now prepare for God a way;
Let the valleys rise to meet Him,
And the hills bow down to greet Him.
Make ye straight what long was crooked,
Make the rougher places plain,
Let your hearts be true and humble,
As befits His holy reign;
For the glory of the Lord
Now o'er earth is shed abroad,
And all flesh shall see the token
That His Word is never broken.
Public domain hymn text (1671; English translation 1863). Words by Johann Olearius, translated by Catherine Winkworth.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Johann Olearius, a German Lutheran theologian and hymn writer, wrote 'Comfort, Comfort Ye My People' in 1671, basing it directly on the opening verses of Isaiah 40, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God… speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,' one of the Old Testament's most direct addresses of consolation.
Isaiah 40 originally spoke to a specific historical situation, exiled Judah, promising that its long period of suffering and judgment was drawing to a close, and Olearius's chorale preserves that same address almost word for word rather than reworking it heavily into new language.
The chorale was later translated into English by Catherine Winkworth, a nineteenth-century Englishwoman whose translations of German hymns did more than perhaps any other single figure's work to introduce the rich Lutheran chorale tradition to English-speaking congregations.
Winkworth, largely self-taught in German and deeply immersed in German devotional literature, published her translations, including this one, in collections such as Lyra Germanica, aiming to preserve both the theological substance and singable rhythm of the original texts rather than producing only literal, unmusical renderings.
The hymn is traditionally set to the tune GENEVAN 42, composed by Louis Bourgeois for the Genevan Psalter in 1551, tying a seventeenth-century German text to a sixteenth-century French Reformed melody, an example of how hymn texts and tunes frequently crossed both national and denominational lines.
Isaiah 40's opening comfort is traditionally read in Christian tradition as introducing the promise of a coming messenger 'crying in the wilderness,' making the chorale a natural fit for Advent worship, where it remains most commonly used today.
Its plain, direct command to 'speak ye comfortably,' addressed not to God but to those charged with delivering the message, gives the hymn an active, outward-facing quality, treating comfort as something the congregation itself is being commissioned to carry to others.
