Paraverse 3 — Movement 1: The God Who Is
This song sits in the doctrine of God, but enters by a different door than Paraverse 1 (None like You) and Paraverse 2 (My God and King). Paraverse 1 confesses the divine nature in stacked attribute form (Belgic / Athanasian register). Paraverse 2 versifies the Psalter call to praise (Psalm 145). Paraverse 3 does what neither does: it sees. It is the prophetic-apocalyptic register of Movement 1 — the throne vision sung as vision, the seraphic Sanctus rendered as the seraphim said it, the heavenly worship of Revelation 4 confessed as the same throne Isaiah saw.
The structural argument is that Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 are one throne: what Isaiah saw, John saw; what shook Isaiah's threshold, surrounds the heavenly worship still. The song moves from the earthly temple-vision (S1–S3) to the heavenly throne-vision (S4–S5) and lands on the unceasing Sanctus that closes the canon's adoration of who God is. John 12:41 makes the canonical identification explicit ("Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory"); the song honors that identification without forcing a Christological reading the lyric is not ready to bear (that is Movement 6).
Five stanzas in an unusual AAAB structure: three monorhyme lines followed by a B-line climax that rises melodically to the stanza's peak and always closes on the word Lord — "High above the nations, Lord" (S1), "Most Holy be the Lord!" (S2), "my eyes have seen the Lord!" (S3), "Power, honour, glory, Lord!" (S4), "Who Was, Who Is, the Coming Lord" (S5). After each B-line, a four-line refrain at half-speed functions as the song's breath-pause:
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
The refrain repeats the couplet twice, sung at half the verse's tempo, hooking the title-confession ("I saw the Lord") and the prophet's Isaiah 6:5 testimony ("mine eyes have seen the Lord") directly into the gathered church's response. The refrain echoes Paraverse 1's Sanctus-pause structure — but where Paraverse 1's refrain is the seraphs' words (the trisagion), Paraverse 3's refrain is the prophet's words (the seeing-confession). The two songs' refrains are canonical complements: one heaven's view, one earth's witness.
Isaiah 6:1–5 and Revelation 4:2–11 are the song's spine end-to-end. Stanzas 1–3 versify Isaiah 6; stanzas 4–5 versify Revelation 4. The throne-identity claim (S4 "the same throne") rests on John 12:41 and the historic Sanctus tradition that already reads the two visions as one.
Stanza 1 — the throne-vision opening (Isaiah 6:1) - Isaiah 6:1 — In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple (L1–4, the four images compressed in order: dying king / Lord enthroned / robe-train / high-and-lifted-up)
Stanza 2 — the seraphim and the earth filled with glory (Isaiah 6:2–3) - Isaiah 6:2 — Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew (L1–2 — the seraphs hovering, the wings covering face and feet) - Isaiah 6:3 second clause — the whole earth is full of His glory (L3, rendered as His might and glory earth afilling; might picks up the Lord of hosts military-Name register) - Isaiah 6:3 first clause — Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts (B-line, compressed to Holy be the Lord of hosts — the Sanctus's content invoked declaratively in the breath, not quoted as the threefold cry; the seraphs' actual trisagion is referred to, not performed by the song; see §4)
Stanza 3 — the foundations shake; the prophet's recoil (Isaiah 6:4–5) - Isaiah 6:4 — And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke (L1–2) - Isaiah 6:5 — Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (L3–4, the Woe of unclean lips in L3, the King in L4)
Stanza 4 — the heavenly throne (Revelation 4:2–3, 5, 10–11) - Revelation 4:2 — And behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne (L1, the throne identity) - Revelation 4:3, 5 — He who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald... From the throne came flashes of lightning (L2, the jewel-rainbow and lightnings compressed) - Revelation 4:10 — the twenty-four elders fall down before him... and cast their crowns before the throne (L3) - Revelation 4:11 — Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power (L4, the elders' single confession)
Stanza 5 — the unceasing Sanctus (Revelation 4:8) - Revelation 4:8 — And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come (L1–4, every clause present: four living creatures / full of eyes / day and night / the trisagion / who was, and is, and is to come rendered as Coming King)
Why throne-vision, why now. Movement 1 needs the seen God sung as seen, not only as confessed (Paraverse 1) or extolled (Paraverse 2). Isaiah 6 is the Old Testament's load-bearing throne vision and the source of the Sanctus that has anchored Christian liturgy since the patristic age. Revelation 4 is its New Testament counterpart and the canon's longest sustained passage on who God is in the heavenly register. Together they are the prophetic-apocalyptic register Movement 1 cannot omit.
Why one song, not two. The Isaiah-Revelation unity is the song's structural argument. Splitting them across two songs would lose the John 12:41 identification and would force one of the two to stand alone — Isaiah 6 without the heavenly worship, or Revelation 4 without the prophetic recoil. Held together, the song confesses that the throne the prophet saw is the throne the heavenly host surrounds; the Holy, holy, holy the seraphs cry is the Holy, holy, holy the four living creatures never cease to say. Same throne, same Sanctus, same God.
Trochaic 8.7.8.7, not LM or CM. Paraverse 1 was LM (8.8.8.8) — the contemplative-doctrinal metre. Paraverse 2 was CM (8.6.8.6) — the Psalter metre. Paraverse 3 needs a third metre, distinct, with the right register-weight. Trochaic 8.7.8.7 carries prophetic-apocalyptic gravity (the falling cadence "HO-ly, HO-ly, HO-ly" lands on the trochee naturally), is a major English/Welsh Reformed metre, and is congregation-singable without forcing the contemplative-LM or psalmic-CM idiom. The metre choice is itself a Movement-1 discipline: no two adjacent songs in the same metre.
Five stanzas, AAAB with rising-B climax + four-line refrain at half-speed. Five stanzas matches Paraverses 1 and 2 — Movement 1 architectural consistency. The AAAB rhyme scheme is the structural surprise: three monorhyme lines (~7–9 syllables) followed by a rising B-line climax ("every note rising higher" — the melody peaks at the B-line of each stanza). After each stanza's B, a four-line refrain (two iterations of the "Mine eyes have seen the Holy Lord / earth and heaven, His Name adored" couplet) is sung at half the verse tempo, functioning as the song's breath-pause and the recurring title-hook.
The refrain is the prophet's confession, not the seraphic Sanctus. Paraverse 1's refrain is the seraphs' words — the trisagion "Holy, holy, holy" — sung between attribute-stanzas. Paraverse 3's refrain is the prophet's words — Isaiah 6:5's "mine eyes have seen the King", expanded to "Mine eyes have seen the Holy Lord / earth and heaven, His Name adored". The two songs' refrains are canonical complements: Paraverse 1 gives us heaven's view (the seraphs at the throne); Paraverse 3 gives us earth's witness (the prophet who saw the throne). The trisagion itself never appears as a threefold cry in Paraverse 3 — the song refers to it ("threefold Holy chants they raise" at S5L3) and invokes it ("Most Holy be the Lord!" at S2B) but never performs it, keeping the Heber-distance maximum and locating the song's recurring voice in Isaiah's confession rather than the seraphs' praise.
The B-line is the climax, not the breath. Earlier drafts treated the B-line as a shorter dropping breath. The final version inverts this: the B-line is the stanza's melodic peak ("every note rising higher") — the climax to which the AAA build leads. The refrain at half-speed then provides the breath function — slower, sustained, the gathered church's response that resolves the stanza's rising tension before the next verse begins. Each B-line still anchors on Lord (the song's vertical pivot), but it lifts melodically rather than dropping.
B-line "Lord" anchor. Every stanza's B-line ends on Lord — "High above the nations, Lord" (S1), "Most Holy be the Lord!" (S2), "my eyes have seen the Lord!" (S3, echoing Isa 6:5 and the refrain's opening), "Power, honour, glory, Lord!" (S4), "Who Was, Who Is, the Coming Lord" (S5). The closing-word invariance ties the five different B-line fragments into one structural shape — five scriptural climaxes vertically anchored on the divine title. The refrain then doubles down on that anchor by repeating "Holy Lord" and rhyming on Lord/adored across all four refrain lines.
Refrain at half-speed — the breath-pause function. The [Refrain — half the speed of the verse] tag tells any performer that the refrain is sung at half the verse's tempo. The verse moves in 6/8 swing at ~110 (dotted-eighth pulse); the refrain at ~55. The half-tempo refrain functions like Paraverse 1's Sanctus breath — the gathered church catches its breath in sustained legato before the next verse's vision-beat begins. The couplet repeats twice each refrain instance, so the title-confession ("Mine eyes have seen the Holy Lord") lands ten times across the song — once per refrain-line, four refrain-lines per refrain, five refrains, plus the S3 B-line that echoes it directly. The hook becomes the song's structural memory.
Vision-narrative voice, not direct address. Paraverse 1 is corporate confession ("There is none like You"). Paraverse 2 is personal exhortation ("I will extol You"). Paraverse 3 is prophetic narrative ("I saw the Lord") — the Psalter has narrative-vision register (Ps 18, Ps 68) alongside direct address, and Reformed worship requires all three. The first-person prophetic I in S3 is Isaiah's I, not the worshipper's claim; the congregation joins the prophet's witness rather than asserting it personally.
The pivot at S4. The shift from Isaiah's earthly vision (S1–S3) to John's heavenly vision (S4–S5) is marked by "Now in heaven shone the same throne." The same is load-bearing — it makes the throne-identity claim explicit, anchored in John 12:41. Without that word, S4 reads as a different scene; with it, the song confesses that what Isaiah glimpsed is what John sees in fullness.
The closing tense-confession. S5L4 — "Was, and Is, and Coming King" — closes the song on Revelation 4:8's who was, and is, and is to come. This is the eternity-of-God confession in apocalyptic idiom. Coming King renders is to come as the parousia-trajectory without naming the Christ-of-Movement-6; for the Movement 1 reader, the Coming King is the eternal-reigning God whose reign is both present and yet-to-be-fully-manifest. The Athanasian-eternity register is maintained.
Light thread, surfaced. Movement 1's Light thread is God as unapproachable Light. The song threads this through S3 (smoke arose to dim the light) and S4 (lightnings). The smoke is presence-veiling (Exodus 19:18, the cloud at Sinai), not absence-of-presence; the lightnings around the Revelation throne are the unbearable radiance the smoke conceals. The Light thread is carried by the veiling-of-light motif — God seen as the Light that cannot be looked upon directly.
In the Skrifberyming and Paraphrase tradition by register. The Scottish Paraphrases versified non-Psalm Scripture in singable metre — and No. 38 ("Twas on that night when doom'd to know") versifies the upper room; Paraphrase 53 ("Ye gates, lift up your heads") versifies Psalm 24's procession-vision. The Skrifberymings versify both Psalter throne-vision (Pss 47, 93, 99) and prophetic-Scripture passages. Versifying Isaiah 6 + Revelation 4 together is in the tradition's range; doing it in trochaic 8.7.8.7 places it inside the broader English-language Reformed hymnody (Welsh-influenced) that the Paraphrases sit alongside.
No borrowed text from Heber. Reginald Heber's "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty" (1826) is the most famous English Isaiah 6 / Revelation 4 hymn. It is 11.12.12.10 — a completely different metre from this song's 8.7.8.7. It opens with direct address ("Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty / Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee"); this song opens with prophetic narrative ("In the year the king lay dying"). Heber has "casting down their golden crowns"; this song has "elders cast their crowns before Him" — both lines derive directly from Revelation 4:10, so some convergence on the verb cast is biblical, not Heberian, and no phrase or syntactic shape is borrowed. Cross-checked: no line of this song matches any line of Heber.
No borrowed text from Scottish Paraphrase 38 or the GKSA Skrifberymings. Paraphrase 38 versifies a different Isaiah passage (Isaiah 53). The GKSA does not versify Isaiah 6 directly in the Skrifberymings; the Sanctus-bearing entries are in the Psalmboek (Pss 99, 113). Cross-checked: no Skrifberyming or Paraphrase line is borrowed.
The trisagion is biblical, not Heberian. Holy, holy, holy is Isaiah 6:3 / Revelation 4:8 verbatim — Scripture's own words, not Heber's invention. Singing the trisagion does not borrow from Heber any more than singing "My God and King" (Paraverse 2) borrows from George Herbert's poem of the same opening. The lineage is the biblical Sanctus the church has sung since the patristic Te Deum.
Metre and rhyme convention. Trochaic 8.7.8.7 with ABCB rhyme is a standard English Reformed metre (used in Lyte's "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven", Watts's "Saviour, Like a Shepherd Lead Us", and many Welsh hymns). Choosing it places this song inside the established English-language Reformed metre catalogue without borrowing any text from a specific antecedent.
"Is this not Heber-redux in Reformed clothes?" — No. Different metre (8.7.8.7 vs 11.12.12.10), different voice (vision-narrative vs direct address), different scriptural compression (Isaiah-and-Revelation pivot vs Revelation-only Sanctus expansion), no shared phrases beyond the biblical trisagion itself. Heber's famous hymn has set a Sanctus-template in English congregational memory; this song refuses to repeat it. The Sanctus appears as the seraphic cry within a vision, not as a four-stanza acclamation to the Trinity. Different work.
"Is the Isaiah-to-Revelation pivot anachronistic — Isaiah didn't see Revelation." — The pivot is canonical, not invented. John 12:41 identifies what Isaiah saw with Christ's glory; Revelation 4 self-consciously echoes Isaiah 6 (six wings, the trisagion, the Lord of hosts). The patristic Sanctus (in every historic liturgy) holds the two together; the Te Deum holds them together; Calvin's commentary on Isaiah 6 holds them together. The lineage is uniform: one throne, one Sanctus, two visions. The song confesses what the tradition has always confessed.
"Is the trisagion-as-refrain not the proper Movement-1 hook? Paraverse 1's Sanctus refrain already did this." — Paraverse 1's Sanctus refrain abstracted the trisagion into a recurring liturgical breath between attribute-stacks. Paraverse 3 puts the trisagion back into its scriptural setting — the seraphim's own cry, the four creatures' unceasing speech. Different mode (embedded vision vs liturgical refrain), same Sanctus. Movement 1 needs both: the Sanctus as the church's recurring breath (Paraverse 1) and the Sanctus as Scripture's own throne-cry (Paraverse 3). Without the latter, the Sanctus reads as church-liturgical hook detached from its prophetic source; without the former, the trisagion is not yet the congregation's own to sing.
"Why narrative-prophetic voice in a Reformed congregational hymn?" — Because Scripture sings narratively (Pss 18, 68, 78, 105, 106, 114), the Skrifberymings versify prophetic passages narratively (the Song of Moses, the Magnificat, the Benedictus), and the Reformed Psalter includes vision-narrative as a legitimate worship register. The first-person prophetic I in S3 is Isaiah's I, embedded in scriptural quotation — the congregation joins Isaiah's confession of unclean lips rather than asserting their own.
"Is Coming King (S5L4) anachronistic — opening Movement 6's Christology in Movement 1?" — No. Revelation 4:8 names "who was, and is, and is to come" without identifying the One on the throne as the Lamb (the Lamb is introduced only in Revelation 5, which the song deliberately does not reach). Coming King renders the is to come clause as the parousia-trajectory of God's reign — eternal, present, and yet-to-be-fully-manifest. For the Movement 1 reader this is the Athanasian-eternity confession; for the Christian reader it is also Christ-the-coming-King, but the song does not force that reading. The Trinity is honored as Movement 1 honors it: by confessing the divine nature in language that the Triune God has self-disclosed.
"Are the Isaiah 6:5 'unclean lips' lines (S3) penitential — does this belong to Movement 3 (the Fracture)?" — No. The prophet's Woe in Isaiah 6:5 is the proper creaturely recoil before the holy God, not the penitential confession of post-fall sin in the Movement-3 sense. Movement 3 lyrically takes up the good order broken; sin diagnosed; the prophet here is not diagnosing sin in the abstract but recoiling before holiness in the concrete. The cleansing coal (Isaiah 6:6–7) — which would be redemptive movement — is deliberately omitted from the song. The song closes Isaiah's vision at v5 ("yet mine eyes have seen the King") and lifts into heavenly worship. The recoil is awe, which is Movement 1's named mode.
"Why English (and why trochaic 8.7.8.7)?" — See Paraverse 1, §6. The 8.7.8.7 trochaic metre is a load-bearing English-Welsh Reformed metre (Lyte, Watts, Welsh revival hymnody) and is appropriate for the prophetic-apocalyptic register this song serves.
The lyric will be approved when it satisfies:
AAAB stanza + rising B-line climax + 4-line refrain at half-speed. Each stanza's L1, L2, L3 are a monorhyme triplet building melodically; L4 (the B-line) is the stanza's melodic peak — "every note rising higher" — and always closes on Lord (or a Lord-anchor word). After each stanza, a four-line refrain (the couplet "Mine eyes have seen the Holy Lord / earth and heaven, His Name adored" repeated twice) is sung at half the verse tempo, functioning as the song's breath-pause.
AAAB rhyme sounds per stanza: S1 slant -one/-ome (alone / throne / dome — long-o assonance), S2 consonance -ld (called / enfold / enthralled), S3 full -all (call / wall / all), S4 full -old (behold / untold / gold), S5 slant long-a-z (gaze / days / raise). Each stanza's own sonic signature; all B-lines end on Lord as the unifying vertical anchor. The refrain rhymes Lord/adored internally, echoing the B-line anchor in different consonant-vowel pairing.
Stanza line length: ~7–9 syllables for L1-L3; B-line 6–8 syllables. Looser metric than the strict trochaic 8.7.8.7 of the earlier draft — modern hymnody's freer-metre feel. Lines flow in 6/8 compound triple swing (anapestic / dactylic leaning rather than 4/4 trochaic march or anapestic AABBA limerick). The refrain is at half the verse tempo (sustained, legato).
Words and music by Attie Retief.
The year a king died, slow, alone, I saw the Lord upon a throne; His robes had filled the temple dome — High above the nations, Lord.
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
A Seraph hovered, as he called, its face and feet with wings enfold; His mighty glory earth enthralled — Most Holy be the Lord!
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
The thresholds shaken by its call, smoke filled the temple wall-to-wall; With unclean lips of mine and all — my eyes have seen the Lord!
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
That selfsame throne, in heav'n, behold, a rainbow made of stones untold; as the elders cast their crowns of gold — Power, honour, glory, Lord!
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
Four-fold creatures — eyes that gaze, day and the night and all their days, threefold Holy chants they raise — Who Was, Who Is, the Coming Lord.
My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored. My eyes have seen the Holy Lord — earth and heaven, His Name adored.
| Stanza | Warrant |
|---|---|
| Refrain (half-speed, after every stanza) L1 — Mine eyes have seen the Holy Lord — L2 — earth and heaven, His Name adored. (couplet repeated twice each refrain) |
L1 — Isa 6:5 (for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts — the prophet's confession turned into the gathered church's response, repeated as the song's title-hook); John 12:41 (Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory). L2 — Isa 6:3 / Ps 113:4 / Heidelberg Q&A 122 (the whole earth is full of His glory + the Name hallowed — earth and heaven, His Name adored compresses the cosmos-wide adoration); Phil 2:10–11 (every knee shall bow... and every tongue confess). Confessional: Heidelberg Q&A 122 (hallow Your Name); WCF 21.1 (the Lord to be feared, loved, praised). The refrain is the prophet's confession absorbed by the gathered church — Paraverse 1's refrain is the seraphs' words (Sanctus); Paraverse 3's refrain is the prophet's words (the seeing-confession), the canonical complement. |
| S1 L1 — The year a king died, slow, alone, L2 — I saw the Lord upon a throne; L3 — His robes had filled the temple dome — B (every note rising higher) — High above the nations, Lord. |
L1 — Isa 6:1 (In the year that King Uzziah died — slow, alone renders the king's prolonged illness and isolation per 2 Chr 26:21). L2 — Isa 6:1 (I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne). L3 — Isa 6:1 (and the train of His robe filled the temple; dome renders the temple's vault). B — Isa 6:1 (high and lifted up); Ps 113:4 (the Lord is high above all nations); Ps 99:2 (the Lord is great in Zion; He is high above all the peoples). Confessional: Belgic Art. 1 (eternal, incomprehensible); WCF 2.1 (infinite in being and perfection). |
| S2 L1 — A Seraph hovered, as he called, L2 — its face and feet with wings enfold; L3 — His mighty glory earth enthralled — B (every note rising higher) — Most Holy be the Lord! |
L1 — Isa 6:2 (Above Him stood the seraphim); the Hebrew seraph = "burning one" (Num 21:6–8; cf. Isa 14:29, 30:6 — fiery serpents/beings). Singular A Seraph treats the seraphim collectively as one iconic figure of burning worship; as he called renders Isa 6:3 (and one called to another) as the seraphic-cry-in-progress. L2 — Isa 6:2 (with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew — face / feet veiled within the wings). L3 — Isa 6:3 second clause (the whole earth is full of His glory — rendered as His mighty glory earth enthralled; enthralled in the older sense of "held in captivating power" — the earth held captive by the manifest weight of God's being). The trisagion itself is not quoted here — the song refers to the seraphic cry without performing it (see Notes). B — Isa 6:3 first clause (Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts — compressed to Most Holy be the Lord!, the holiness-confession in declarative-imperative form); Rev 4:8 (Lord God Almighty). Confessional: WCF 2.1 (most holy); Heidelberg Q&A 122 (the Name hallowed); Athanasian Creed (incomprehensible). |
| S3 L1 — The thresholds shaken by its call, L2 — smoke filled the temple wall-to-wall; L3 — With unclean lips of mine and all — B (every note rising higher) — my eyes have seen the Lord! |
L1 — Isa 6:4 (And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called — thresholds plural, exactly as the Hebrew has it; shaken by its call renders the voice-shaking). L2 — Isa 6:4 (and the house was filled with smoke); Ex 19:18 (Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke — the cloud-and-smoke as veiling-presence). Wall-to-wall renders the whole-house filling. L3 — Isa 6:5 (Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips — mine and all compresses the prophet-and-his-people identification: my lips, and all the people's lips, are unclean). B — Isa 6:5 (for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts — the Lord directly). Confessional: Heidelberg Q&A 96 (the holy name of God only with fear and reverence — the prophet's awe as catechetical posture); Belgic Art. 1 (invisible). |
| S4 L1 — That selfsame throne, in heav'n, behold, L2 — a rainbow made of stones untold; L3 — as the elders cast their crowns of gold — B (every note rising higher) — Power, honour, glory, Lord! |
L1 — Rev 4:2 (behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne); John 12:41 (Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him — the canonical identification of the throne Isaiah saw with the throne John sees; selfsame is the load-bearing word). L2 — Rev 4:3 (He who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald — stones untold compressing jasper / carnelian / emerald into the open-ended gem-throne image). L3 — Rev 4:10 (the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who is seated on the throne... and cast their crowns before the throne). B — Rev 4:11 (Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power — Power, honour, glory, Lord compresses the three things the elders ascribe, in re-ordered fronted form, addressed directly to the Lord); Rev 5:12 (Worthy is the Lamb — held in reserve for Movement 6). Confessional: WCF 21.1 (the sovereign Lord to be feared, loved, praised). |
| S5 L1 — Four-fold creatures — eyes that gaze, L2 — day and the night and all their days, L3 — threefold Holy chants they raise — B (every note rising higher) — Who Was, Who Is, the Coming Lord. |
L1 — Rev 4:6–8 (around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures... full of eyes all around and within); Ezek 1:18 (their rims were full of eyes all around — the Old Testament background to John's creatures). L2 — Rev 4:8 (day and night they never cease to say; all their days renders the unceasing-ness). L3 — Rev 4:8 (Holy, holy, holy); Isa 6:3 — the threefold Holy of the trisagion, referred to here ("threefold Holy chants they raise") but not quoted: the four creatures raise the cry, the song describes their raising it. The Sanctus at both ends of the canon is acknowledged as the song's invisible engine without being performed. B — Rev 4:8 (is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come — Who Was, Who Is, the Coming Lord renders all three tenses with the parousia-trajectory of is to come landing on the song's recurring Lord B-line anchor); Rev 1:4, 8 (who is and who was and who is to come — the divine self-identification opening the Apocalypse). Confessional: Athanasian Creed (eternal); Heidelberg Q&A 26 (the eternal Father... still upholds and governs); WCF 2.1 (infinite in being). |