In July 1741, a devout Protestant bachelor named Charles Jennens (1700–1773) sent one of the greatest musicians of the day a libretto for another oratorio.[1] Jennens had written texts for oratorios before, but this one would be different.[2] In a day when Jennens saw Enlightenment thinking outside of the church and the influence of Deism within the church undermining the truth of Scripture and the necessity of a personal Savior, he wanted both to persuade the skeptic and to assure the believer about the truth and beauty of Christ.[3] He hoped George Frideric Handel, who shared Jennens’s faith and had already written some forty operas, would help.[4]
1. For background on the often overlooked philanthropist and polymath Charles Jennens, in particular his devout faith and “role as a champion of Christianity,” see Ruth Smith, “The Achievements of Charles Jennens (1700-1773),” Music & Letters 70.2 (1989): 161–190; Ruth Smith, “Online Talk | Charles Jennens: The Man Behind Handel’s Messiah,” FoundlingMuseum, 13 July 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3zdb2jdm.
2. “Jennens was the only Handel librettist to cast the defense of Christianity itself as an oratorio. He set out precisely those essentials of Christianity that were being attacked [in his day]: the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s birth, life and death; His chief miracles—His incarnation, resurrection and ascension; His redemption of mankind; apostolic authority; and the primacy of Christianity among the world’s religions.” Smith, “The Achievements of Charles Jennens (1700-1773),” 182.
3. Calvin Stapert’s explanation of Deism helps demonstrate the apologetic and evangelistic reasons why Charles Jennens wrote the libretto for Messiah: “Deism was fundamentally at odds with Christian beliefs that humans are basically sinful, that they are incapable of saving themselves, and therefore that they need a savior. In other words, Deists did not believe in the need for a Messiah. Messiah was born into this world of growing threat to the church.” Calvin R. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 75.
4. Jonathan Keats, a Handel biographer, speaks of Handel’s devout and storied Protestant faith, noting that “there is not the slightest evidence that Handel ever swerved from the Protestant Christianity in which he had been brought up. His forebears, who included Lutheran pastors [Handel’s mother was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor], were noted as having suffered during the Thirty Years War for their adherence to ‘the pure evangelical truth,’ and he remained constant to the beliefs his family had instilled within him.” Jonathan Keates, Messiah: The Composition and Afterlife of Handel’s Masterpiece (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 119.
Jennens offered the libretto to Handel as gift and took no payment, hoping the finished musical work would direct people to the greatest Gift.
Handel’s finest oratorio, the one that fills concert halls everywhere at Christmas, is every bit Jennens’s Messiah as Handel’s, and even more so. Handel himself referred to the finished musical masterpiece about Christ’s work as “Your (Jennens’s) Messiah.”[5] Together, they composed a masterpiece that made the truth about the Messiah beautiful so as to make him delightful. The loveliness of the music helps see the loveliness of Christ.
5. Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 15.
A Carol of The King: Psalm 22
No section of Messiah showcases the love of Christ in his suffering for sinners more clearly than Part II: I. Christ’s Passion, Scourging, and Crucifixion (Scenes 22–30) and II. Christ’s Death and Resurrection (Scenes 31–32).[6] While most modern performances of Messiah take place during Christmastime, hearing Messiah during Christmas would have been unfamiliar to Jennens and Handel. They wrote Messiah for performances during Lent and Easter, that time of year when Christians round the world remember the vicarious death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the place of sinners.[7]
6. This labeling follows Jennens’s own authoritative layout given for the London performance in 1743. Burrows, Handel, 57–58.
7. At Handel’s death bed, “Dr. Warren, who attended Handel in his last sickness, . . . remembers his dying . . . that he had most seriously and devoutly wished, for several days before his death, that he might breathe his last on Good-Friday, ‘in hopes,’ he said, ‘of meeting his Good God, his sweet Lord and Savior, on the day of his resurrection,’ meaning the third day, or the Easter Sunday following” (italics original).” Charles Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey, and the Pantheon. (London, 1785), 31. For an online edition see, https://tinyurl.com/3spsrkar.
The Context of Psalm 22 in Messiah
Jennens opens Part II of Messiah the same way he opened the entire oratorio, with a word from John the Baptist. The opening voice of Part I comes with John the Baptist’s cry, voiced through a tenor aria, to comfort the Lord’s people (Isa. 40:1–4). Handel had preceded the Baptist’s cry with an opening French overture whose stately rhythm could announce the entrance of a king.[8] The surprise as Messiah unfolds is just what kind of king the Messiah would be.
8. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah, 88–89.
Handel opens Part II of Messiah, like Part I, with another French-styled piece, yet this time he employs a minor key and a chorus. [9] Handel is matching Jennens’s text, hinting at the kind of king to come. The music of Part II, as with Part I, also opens with a cry of John the Baptist. The fugal chorus takes up his words singing somberly, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 KJV). Following the call to “Behold, the Lamb,” one song after another holds up a picture of Christ’s anguished suffering from Isaiah 53 (Scenes 22–31).
9. Burrows, Handel, 63.
Slashing strings sound like lashes across the Savior’s back. “Dotted rhythms in the opening chorus ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ in the second section of the great alto aria ‘He was despised’ and in ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs’ evoke jagged extremes of pain and suffering.”[10] This is not the king we expected to behold, whose entrance Handel had announced with the opening royal overture of Part I. Nor is it the outcome we expect of the babe lying in a manger at Christmas.[11] But here we arrive at the heart of the Handel’s Messiah, compositionally and thematically. We arrive at the heart of God’s Messiah, too. His throne lies not on a bed of straw or in a palace, but on a tree.
10. Keates, Messiah, 80.
11. The Baroque Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo combined evocative images of Christ’s birth, crucifixion, and resurrection in a striking portrait called “The Infant Christ Asleep on the Cross” (c. 1670). Charles Jennens had this painting in his personal art collection. It can be seen now at Sheffield Museums.
After the opening chorus “Behold, the Lamb” in Part II, Handel writes to make us behold Christ for over ten minutes. We see him “despised and rejected … [giving] his back to the smiters” in the alto’s aria (Scene 23,Isa. 53:3; 50:6). Here Handel gives us the longest piece of music in the entire oratorio. He will not let us look away. Moreover, with every song after the choruses call to “Behold, the Lamb of God,” Handel moves farther away from the opening key of Part II (G minor). Adding flats to every successive song, Handel musically descends deeper and deeper into the darkness of Christ’s suffering, taking the listener all the way down with him.
After four songs of beholding the Messiah from Isaiah 53 (“He was despised”; “Surely he hath borne our griefs”; “And with his stripes we are healed”; “All we like sheep”), we expect a textual response and resolution. But at this very moment, Jennens and Handel take an unexpected turn. Textually, Jennens suddenly transports us from Isaiah 53 to Psalm 22; musically, Handel adds more flats again to another minor key taking us to the very bottom of the opening scene.[12] Now, instead of reverence at scenes just witnessed, a tenor voice breaks in with an irreverent, unexpected response: “All they that see him, laugh him to scorn” (Ps. 22:7). Musically and textually, we have come to a jarring and unexpected outcome. By placing Psalm 22 right after Isaiah 53, Jennens has made Isaiah’s suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53) into the forsaken Davidic Messiah (Psalm 22). We expected resolution but are met with rejection. People are not embracing God’s suffering Messiah; they are taunting him.[13] Handel’s music matches the mood.
12. Handel opens Part II with the “Behold, the Lamb of God” chorus in G minor (Scene 22). By the time he arrives at the tenor recitative in “All they that see him” (Ps. 22:7), he has moved to B-flat minor (Scene 27). In five scenes, Handel has “descended” from two flats in G minor to five flats in B-flat minor. The complete movement from the opening of Part II, Scenes 22—27, runs G minor — E-flat major — F minor — F minor — F major (ending in F minor) — B-flat minor. Even the tryptic of choruses in the key of F (Scenes 24–26) provide a sustained meditation before a “downward” key change to B-flat minor when a tenor solo breaks in. Chris Enloe (MM in Composition from The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and current DMA candidate) provided valuable input for this note. Any error in explanation remains the writers, however.
13. As Tozer observed, “Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees.” A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, (2014), 46.
The Messiah of Psalm 22 in Messiah
Handel has followed Christ downward into the darkness of grief. He and Jennens have now taken us into darkest pit of the Bible, Psalm 22. We have arrived at hell on earth. “My God, my God,” an orphaned cry erupts—“Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). The accent falls on that last word. It’s God Messiah King, screaming in the dark. Merry Christmas. It’s the carol of the King.
Just as the opening scenes in Part II of Handel’s Messiah about a suffering Messiah clash with the opening scenes in Part I about a sovereign Messiah, so the suffering King in Psalm 22 clashes with the sovereign King in Psalm 2. The Psalter opens with its own overture in Psalm 2 with a reprisal of the Davidic covenant from 2 Samuel 7: God has set his holy Messiah-King on high in Zion and given him the nations as his inheritance (Ps. 2:6, 8). All shall be well.
Yet after the royal Davidic overture decrescendos to silence in Psalm 2, Book I of the Psalter (Pss. 3–41) generally shows, starting immediately with Psalm 3, God’s Messiah-King harried, in deep distress. Right in the middle of Book I (Pss. 3–42), with nineteen psalms on either side (Pss. 3–21 and 23–42), sits Psalm 22. We have gone from Mt. Zion in Psalm 2 to Mt. Calvary in Psalm 22. The dissonance between the expected Messiah of Psalm 2 and the executed Messiah of Psalm 22 is deafening. “Silent night, Holy night.” The “Son of God, Loves pure light,” lies not in a crèche but on a cross.
Psalm 22 is a Psalm of David, God’s promised Messiah-King. But if Psalm 22 opens with God’s King bereft of God, then what of God’s people? If a song opens with God forsaking his King, it means that God must be forsaking his people as well. The bloodcurdling cry of God’s King, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1) calls into the question the very love of God, as prophets throughout the Old Testament described God as “steadfast” (Exod. 34:6–7). An absent God means abandoned promises. And lost promises mean lost love. God has left the building and left no forwarding address. But it gets worse.
Psalm 22 is a “Psalm of David,” the superscription explains. The New Testament writers leave no doubt that this song of Psalm 22 is not about David at all, but about great David’s greater Son. This is the carol of the King. A carol of Jesus, the King. Alec Motyer explains that “this Psalm goes beyond any experience of David’s. While it could arise from sometime of suffering, it goes far beyond such to torture and death. We are listening to David the prophet (Acts 2:30) looking forward to the suffering Messiah.”[14] The New Testament writers quote Psalm 22 directly no fewer than four times, with twenty more possible allusions.[15] The preacher of Hebrews puts the words of Psalm 22 directly into the mouth of Christ, boldly declaring that Psalm 22 is what “he [Jesus] says” (Ps. 22:22 // Heb 2:12 NIV). [16] Psalm 22 truly is a carol of the King.[17]
14. Alec Motyer, Psalms by the Day: A New Devotional Translation (Christian Focus, 2016), 57. Waltke sees Psalm 22 as “typico-prophetic, in which David’s trials and triumphs typify Christ, yet David’s exaggerated language rises above his own experiences and finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ.” Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 895. J. Barton Payne argues that “Psalm 22 is unique because it is the only psalm in which David was so completely overshadowed by the Holy Spirit that all of its words became in fact, the words of Christ.” J. Barton Payne, The Theology of the Older Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1962), 253.
15. The Greek New Testament editors indicate twenty-four references to Psalm 22: four direct quotations (Μatt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 19:24; Heb. 2:12) and twenty allusions. Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, The Greek New Testament, 4th rev. ed. (New York: United Bible Society, 1994) 887, 895.
16. James Mays adds that when the gospel writers highlight that the first words of Psalm 22 are the words of Christ, they mean for readers to read all of Psalm 22 in light of Christ, as “citing the first words of a text was … a way of identifying an entire passage.” James L. Mays, “Prayer and Christology: Psalm 22 as Perspective on the Passion,” Theology Today 42.3 (1985): 322.
17. Waltke and Houston explain that “rarely have commentators been condemned for heresy on the basis of their interpretation of psalms,” but that is what happened at the fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople: “As a test case of orthodoxy (i.e., that the Psalm refers to Christ), Theodore of Mopsuestia’s exposition of Psalm 22 was used to condemn him of heresy. . . . [P]art of the case against Theodore of Mopsuestia at the fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553 was his commentary on Psalm 22.” Bruce K. Waltke and James M. Houston, The Psalms as Christian Worship: An Historical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 383.
Charles Jennens affixed a Latin phrase from Virgil at the top of Messiah’stitle page. The phrase read Majora Canamus, meaning “Let us sing of greater things.” Jennens was calling all to sing of things greater than anything in this world and to see greater things in the Bible than we could ever imagine, Christ himself. “Did not our hearts burn with us?” Jennens hoped listeners would say (Luke 24:32). In the same way, Majora Canamus sits across the top of Psalm 22, “Let us sing of greater things (than David).” The great British Baptist pastor, Charles Spurgeon explains
[Psalm 22] is the photograph of our Lord’s saddest hours, the record of his dying words, the lachrymatory of his last tears, the memorial of his expiring joys. David and his afflictions may be here in a very modified sense, but, as the star is concealed by the light of the sun, he who sees Jesus will probably neither see nor care to see David (italics added).[18]
18. C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volume 1: Psalms 1–57 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), 324.
In the voice of David, we see sufferings of Christ. The gospel writers apply Psalm 22 directly to the passion of Christ (Μatt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 19:24). Indeed, as Bruce Waltke highlights, “No psalm is quoted more in the gospels than Psalm 22, . . . it shaped the Passion Narratives of the Synoptic[s].”[19] The gospel writers show us what Messiah was suffering, and when they quote Psalm 22, they also show us what he was thinking. As his body twisted in agony, his soul twisted, too. The little Lord Jesus may have been asleep on the hay, but his soul seared with pain, fastened to a tree.
19. Waltke and Houston, The Psalms as Christian Worship, 377.
In the first half of Psalm 22, the Son of David stretches his arms across a wooden beam and sings an aria of searing separation (Ps. 22:1–21a). As the Lord “laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6), the cosmic horror set in on the Savior’s soul “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” he screams into the night (Ps. 22:1 KJV). Matthew records the groan; it is Christ’s fourth word from the cross (Μatt. 27:46). What a way for the King’s carol to sound.
The anguish of abandonment (Ps. 22:1–5) turns into the anguish of personal attack (Ps. 22:5–13). Abandon by God, he is now mocked by men, men more like savage beasts than noble human beings. It is here in Psalm 22, as Christ descends into the darkness of bearing the sins of the world, that Handel captures the drama. First, a tenor mockingly declares, “All they that see him laugh him to scorn; they shoot out their lips, and shake their heads” (Ps. 22:7 // Matt. 27:39). Handel elevates the word “laugh” in the music, capturing the mocking tone of those around the cross and allowing the tenor soloist to sing the word sounding like derisive laughter. The “scourging rhythm [from the preceding pieces] of ‘He gave his back to the smiters’ and ‘Surely he hath born our griefs’” returns.[20] Handel’s music paints a scene telling us that they shredded his soul with their words just as they had shredded his body with their whips.
20. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah, 116.
But the tenor’s angry recitative is but prologue for a second round of mockery. Imitating the mocking mood of Psalm 22:8, Handel summons a large fugal chorus to heighten the anguish of Christ’s personal attack and deepen the venomed mockery of the crowd. They gather at Christ’s feet as he is suspended in the air. They hiss, “He trusted in God that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, if he delights in him” (Ps. 22:8 // Matt 27:43).[21] Like drunken men in a pub, the choristers pass along their mocking chant, “He trusted in God. . . . Let him deliver him,” from one voice part to the next. Handel sets the word “delight” onto the lips of choristers in melismatic runs, notes rapidly moving and up down, so that the word “delight” sounds like derisive laughter. We are now far away from the “Glories to the newborn King” sung at his cradle. There is only jeering, searing laughter here. But more than merry mockery is happening.
21. See the See “The Text, Grammar and Participants of Ps 22:9” Psalms: Layer by Layer to see the textual difficulties with Psalm 22:8[9]. One might translate the verses as a mocking command to “Commit your way to God,” rather than as simple declaration: “He trusted in God.” Either way, the point remains largely the same, though the temptation of Christ during this moment is stronger if one takes the verse as a command.
Roger Bullard points out that “this is a temptation scene, the third and last of the temptations of Jesus.”[22] Bullard explains:
22. Roger A. Bullard, Messiah: The Gospel According to Handel’s Oratorio (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 83.
The first is immediately after his baptism, when Satan challenges him to turn stones into bread, and do other things which would gain him a large messianic following. But that is not to be the way of God’s anointed one (Matt. 4:1–22; Luke 4:1–13). The second is midway through Jesus’s ministry, when he withdraws from the country with his disciples and asks them who they think he is. Peter confesses him—for the first time in Mark’s gospel—as the Messiah. It is at this point that Jesus first tells his disciples of impending suffering, and he does so plainly. Whereupon Peter rebukes Jesus: this cannot be—the Messiah does not suffer. Jesus responds to Peter with the same words, which in Matthew he addresses to Satan: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt. 8:29–33). The way of Messiahship is to be a way of suffering. Now, on the cross taunted by those who believe that his dereliction is an obvious sign that he is no Messiah, no Son of God, Jesus keeps his silence.[23]
23. Bullard, Messiah, 83.
But what dramatic irony. Jesus was not only “Lord at his birth” as the words of “Silent Night” proclaim; he is also Lord at his death. This is the Lenten carol of the King reigning from the cross. For in his silent response to their demonic temptation, he proves himself to be the Lamb of God “who opened not his mouth,” to “taketh away the sin of the world” (Isa. 53:7; John 1:29).
But then the anguish of abandonment and personal attack land Christ in “the dust of death” (Ps. 22:14–21). Centuries before crucifixion existed, we see a vivid view of Christ’s crucifixion in real time. Christ groans from the cross as they bore holes into his hands and feet.[24] He slides down the cross in exhaustion pulling bones out of joint, and his tongue shrivels like a prune and sticks to the side of his jaw. It is now a total eclipse. All is not calm, but all is dark.
24. See “Exegetical Issues: The Text of Psalm 22:17b” Psalms: Layer by Layer.
14 All my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.16 For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;18 They divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots (Ps. 22:14–18 ESV).
As Psalm 22:18 ends, the gospel writers apply Psalm 22 to Christ’s crucifixion one final time (John 19:24). They have taken everything from Christ, his strength, his reputation, and now his clothing. He came into this world naked; he would depart the same way. This is the carol of the naked King, an aria of agony (Ps. 22:1–21a).
Then in a eucatastrophic moment, the King changes his tune right in the middle of Psalm 22:21. He moves from searing suffering in Psalm 22:1–21a to sudden deliverance in Psalm 22:21b–31. The executed Christ becomes the exalted Christ. The aria of agony has modulated up to an aria of ascension. In a sudden turn, in the middle of a line, he changes his tune, “You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (Ps. 22:21b–31). The feasts of merry old Mr. Fezziwig in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol have nothing on the feasts of Christ, the ascended king of Psalm 22:21b–31. The risen Christ shall see to it that “the afflicted eat and are satisfied”; “that all the families of the earth shall . . . turn to the Lord, and all . . . the nations shall worship,” and “they shall . . . proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it” (Ps. 22:26–27, 31). The carol of the King has become the carol of the redeemed.
But Christ has saved one last surprise in his aria as the King. The cross looked like an inglorious defeat, but in his death Christ took up the final words of Psalm 22 and declared victory: “It is done (finished)” (Ps. 22:31 // John 19:30). The carol of the anguished King has now become the carol of the ascended King.
Postlude: Handel’s Messiah and The Messiah of Psalm 22
The anguished aria of searing separation in Psalm 22:1–21a modulates to one of sudden deliverance in Psalms 22:21b–31, not only for Christ, but for all, who like the shepherds and wise men at Christmas, adore this King. The writer of Hebrews, quoting Psalm 22:22, tells us that Christ identified with our humanity in his incarnation at Christmas, identified with our sin in his atoning death on Good Friday, and achieved our victory over sin and death in his resurrection at Easter. And now the carol of the King becomes the carol of redeemed. Having passed through the darkness of death and out the other side, he stands amid his people and sings praises so that his carol might become ours (Heb. 2:12).
Christmas is a time for caroling. In this carol of the King, Christ sings the loudest among his brothers, bringing great favor on those whom his favor rests (Heb. 2:12; Luke 2:14). The Messiah’s suffering was for us. He changes our suffering from a fermata of death to a measure of rest in this life that modulates to eternal rest in the next.
So, sing into the dark, even at Christmas. Christ not only sympathizes with our sorrows; he also transforms them. He suffered finally, so that we will not finally suffer. What the venomous voices of the crowds meant for evil—Let him trust God to deliver him—God was working for good. “Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth!” Handel taught us to sing. The carol of the King has become the carol of redeemed.
A sculptured monument adorns Handel’s grave at Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. Handel had set aside 600 pounds to cover any funeral costs, which would have included his gravestone. At his tomb in Westminster, Handel’s sculpture stands holding a music score opened to a page from Messiah. The notes reveal a song that echoed Handel’s own personal hope: “I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25 KJV). His life, like the motto adorning the title page of Messiah—Majora Canamus—had sung of greater things indeed. The Messiah of Psalm 22, far greater than Handel, invites us to take up his song and make it our own. “You who fear the Lord,” he says in Psalm 22, “Praise him!” “You, your children, and generations to come.” Merry Christmas. And Majora Canamus.
