Hymns based on Matthew 26

Matthew 26 has given hymn writers words for 3 hymns in this library, by writers including William B. Tappan, Isaac Watts and Robert Campbell. 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 Matthew 26:26: “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks for it, and broke it. He gave to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.””

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.