Reawaken Hymns
8 songs checked against the passages they lean on. Each one was graded on its own, against what that song does with the text.
How the 8 checks landed
- ~ FAITHFUL 2
- NOT A QUOTE 6
This is a count, not a verdict. We grade songs, one at a time, against what each one does with the text. A tally of those checks describes a catalogue. It is not a judgment of the people who wrote or sang it, and no number here puts anyone on or off The List. Most drift is craft pressure, not deception. Read the proofs, not the arithmetic.
The songs
NOT A QUOTE
“I Need Thee Every Hour”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. Nothing here is offered as a verse, and what it says at its centre is the verse's own. Just know that John 15:5 states that dependence as a fact about branches, not as a feeling you have to keep producing.✓ Never says it is quoting at all: no verse number, no scripture framing, nothing offered as the Bible's own words, and the publisher's resource page for this recording cites no passage either
⚠ None of the verse's vocabulary is sung. Vine, branches, fruit and remain are all absent, so a singer looking for John 15 in the words will not find it there
NOT A QUOTE
“Abide With Me”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. Nothing here is offered as a quotation. Just know that Luke 24:29 asks for one evening and the hymn asks for a lifetime. Other texts underwrite the larger request. This verse does not make it.✓ Never says it is quoting, anywhere: no verse number, no scripture framing, nothing presented as the Bible's own words
⚠ Luke 24:29 is a request for one night's lodging with a practical reason attached. The hymn's evening is a figure for the end of a life, which is Lyte's reading and not the verse's statement
NOT A QUOTE
“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. It is devotion built on Matthew's crucifixion scene, not a quotation of it. Know that its printed credit line names an author the manuscripts do not, and skips the two men whose words you sing.✓ Every physical detail in the opening stanza is in Matthew 27:29-30 itself. The thorns, the crown, the scorn, the blows to the head. The hymn describes the scene without adding to it.
⚠ The credit line on both the official upload and the publisher's resource page names Bernard of Clairvaux and the year 1153. The earliest manuscript of the Latin cycle names Arnulf of Leuven, and scholarship has not accepted the Bernard ascription for over a century.
NOT A QUOTE
“O Come All Ye Faithful”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. Nothing here is offered as a quotation. It puts the shepherds' errand in your mouth as an invitation to worship, which is a fair use of the scene rather than a report of it.✓ Never says it is quoting at all: no verse number, no scripture framing, nothing presented as the Bible's own words
⚠ The stanza that actually tells the shepherds' story is missing twice over. It is not Wade's, and this recording does not include it
NOT A QUOTE
“Doxology”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. Nothing here is quoting a verse. The stanza calls the same two ranks Psalm 148 calls, below and above, then names the Trinity, which the psalm does not.✓ Never says it is quoting: no verse is cited on the recording or on the publisher's page, so nothing is presented as scripture
⚠ The order is reversed. Psalm 148 calls the heavens first and the earth second, and that order is part of its argument, since it ends by saying His name alone is exalted above both
~ FAITHFUL
“Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. The stanza that taunts death and the grave is Paul's own pair of questions, kept in the King James wording and reshaped only for meter. Nothing is added that the passage does not carry.✓ The taunt stanza keeps both of Paul's questions whole: death asked about its sting, the grave asked about its victory, nothing softened
⚠ No translation is named. The grave-address tracks the King James specifically, so a singer checking the stanza against most modern Bibles will find both questions put to death and no grave addressed at all. The hymn did not err; its Bible was the KJV
~ FAITHFUL
“Immortal Invisible”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. It sets the doxology of 1 Timothy 1:17 in the King James's own words, honestly expanded. Just know the title's "wise" is a King James reading; most modern Bibles print "the only God" there.✓ The title and opening carry the verse's own King James vocabulary, resequenced but not altered, and Smith headed the hymn with the verse itself when he published it
⚠ No translation is named on the recording, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked
NOT A QUOTE
“Man of Sorrows”
Reawaken Hymns
Sing it. Nothing here is quoting. The hymn takes three King James words spoken in contempt and sings them as a title of honor, and that reversal is the one Isaiah's chapter itself makes.✓ The opening phrase is Isaiah 53:3 in the King James wording, and the hymn treats it as shocking, which is what the verse's own context makes it
⚠ In the verse the phrase is a report, not a name. The first stanza's marvel depends on knowing that, and heard cold, "man of sorrows" can register as one more honorific instead of an insult the text records