Lyrics
Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son!
Hail, in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
He comes with succor speedy
To those who suffer wrong,
To help the poor and needy,
And bid the weak be strong;
To give them songs for sighing,
Their darkness turn to light,
Whose souls, condemned and dying,
Were precious in His sight.
He shall come down like showers
Upon the fruitful earth,
And love, joy, hope, like flowers,
Spring in His path to birth:
Before Him on the mountains
Shall peace, the herald, go,
And righteousness in fountains
From hill to valley flow.
To Him shall prayer unceasing
And daily vows ascend;
His kingdom still increasing,
A kingdom without end;
The tide of time shall never
His covenant remove;
His name shall stand forever,
That name to us is love.
Note: the later verse(s) below have been reconstructed from historical memory and may not be word-for-word identical to the original published text.
Public domain hymn text (1821). Words by James Montgomery.
The Story Behind the Hymn
James Montgomery wrote this hymn’s text in 1821, as a paraphrase of Psalm 72 — the same psalm Isaac Watts had earlier reworked into ‘Jesus Shall Reign’.
Montgomery’s own treatment of the psalm’s material takes a notably different emphasis than Watts’s, though. It focuses considerably more heavily on social justice themes — breaking oppression, freeing captives, helping the poor and needy — than on Watts’s more purely geographic vision of Christ’s kingdom spreading to every nation.
That particular emphasis reflects Montgomery’s own well-documented personal history as a newspaper editor twice imprisoned for his political convictions.
It also reflects his lifelong active support for the British movement to abolish slavery throughout the empire — a cause he championed repeatedly, and at real personal cost, in his own newspaper writing throughout his career.
Unlike Watts’s earlier, more triumphantly universal treatment of the same psalm, Montgomery’s version keeps its attention fixed considerably more closely on the specific, concrete condition of the oppressed and suffering that Christ’s reign would specifically address and reverse.
It is a hymn about kingship written less as celebration of raw power and dominion, and more as anticipation of a very specific kind of justice — for those Montgomery’s own journalism and activism had spent decades advocating for.
The hymn was originally written in a considerably longer form, spanning eight full stanzas, of which modern hymnals typically print only three or four.
It has remained a standard hymn associated with Epiphany and general themes of Christ’s kingship. Its social-justice emphasis has given it particular renewed prominence in more recent decades, among congregations specifically seeking hymns that connect traditional Christian worship directly to concerns for poverty and justice.
