Hymns based on Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 has given hymn writers words for 3 hymns in this library, by writers including Ray Palmer, St. Bernard of Clairvaux; Arnulf, Abbot of Villers-la-Ville; Paul Gerhardt; James W. Alexander and Horatio Nelson. Each is listed below with the lines that echo the chapter and the verses they draw on, quoted from the World English Bible, a public-domain modern translation.

The verse these hymns return to most is Hebrews 12:2: “looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hymn writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knew their Bibles almost by heart, and they wove its phrases into their lines — sometimes as a close paraphrase, as in the metrical psalms, and sometimes as a single image carried into a new setting. Reading the verse beside the line shows what the writer had in mind, and often why a hymn was chosen to be sung alongside a particular reading.