Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken

The text of the hymn Glorious things of Thee are spoken, by John Newton (1725-1807), may serve not only as an example of a song used in Christian worship but also as a demonstration of the figurative use of the place-name Zion to signify the household of God; heaven; or the afterlife. It often indicates, as here, an ideal state, such as 'the new Jerusalem'.

Textual note: the hymn exists in many variants. This one is taken from The Church Hymnary, O.U.P., 1938. The hymn is usually sung to the tune 'Austrian Hymn', by Joseph Haydn, which may be best known to anglophones as the tune of the German national anthem, the Deutschlandlied, which starts " Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit", and before WWEII "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".

line	verse	Notes
V.1 l.1	Glorious things of Thee are spoken,
l.2	Zion, city of our God;
3	He whose word cannot be broken	i.e. God
4	Formed thee for His own abode
5	On the Rock of Ages founded	God
6	What can shake thy sure repose?
7	With salvation's walls surrounded	i.e. the salvation brought by Jesus' death
8	Thou mayst smile at all thy foes.
V.2 l.1	See! the streams of living waters	Metaphoric for spiritual nourishment/enrichment
l.2	Springing from eternal love
3	Well supply the sons and daughters
4	And all fear of want remove.
5	Who can faint, when such a river
6	Ever flows their thirst to assuage?
7	Grace, which, like the Lord, the giver,	The interpretation of God's 'Grace' is a distinction between Catholics and Protestants -
8	Never fails from age to age.	- and this is a Protestant, specifically Methodist, nuance
V. 3 l. 1	Round each habitation hov'ring
2	See! the cloud and fire appear	reference to Exodus 13, vv. 21-22, where God led the Jews in "the wilderness of the Red sea" ...
3	For a glory and a covering,	... "by day in a pillar of a cloud ... and by night in a pillar of fire".
4	Showing that the Lord is near.
5	Blest inhabitants of Zion,
6	Washed in the Redeemer's blood,	Common trope for 'cleansed of sin by the blood [death] of Jesus'
7	Daily on the manna feeding	Manna is the food that God provided 'magically' for the children of Israel during the Exodus (Exod. 16)
8	Makes them kings and priests to God.
Verse 4 l.1	Saviour, if of Zion's city
2	I, through grace, a member am,
3	Let the world deride or pity,
4	I will glory in Thy Name
5	Fading is the worldling's pleasure,	'worldling' ~ One devoted to the interests and pleasures of the world; a worldly-minded person.
6	All his boasted pomp and show;
7	Solid joys and lasting treasure	the spiritual goods of heaven
8	None but Zion's children know.	Only God's chosen can achieve heaven

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