Haggai 2:7 vs. “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”

Why it matters

A hymn outlasts the Bible edition it was written beside. Wesley's phrase entered English worship in the 1740s from a translation that had a person coming in Haggai 2:7, and it is still sung every Advent in churches whose pew Bibles no longer read that way. Nobody has misquoted anything. But a singer who hears a title for Christ inside a hymn, and assumes it can be looked up and found, may open the verse and not find it. The honest answer is that the reading exists, is defended in print, and is not the only one. Knowing that costs one look at the verse and one press of the translation toggle above.

Helpful comparison

Set the three translations on this site beside each other at Haggai 2:7 and the difference is not a matter of style. The KJV has the desire of all nations coming. The WEB has the precious things of all nations coming. The BSB has the nations themselves coming, bringing all their treasures. In the first, someone arrives. In the other two, something does.

The dispute is old and is about grammar. The noun is singular and the verb that goes with it is plural, which is what pushes many translators toward reading the noun collectively, as the desirable things of the nations. Wayne Jackson sets out the case for keeping the personal reading, noting that the word is used of persons elsewhere and that Hebrew allows a verb to agree with the nearer of two nouns. Herbert Wolf's 1976 article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society traces the twentieth-century move away from the personal reading, from the 1901 American Standard Version onward, and argues the move may not be altogether justified. So the hymn's reading is a live scholarly position, not a mistake. It is also a minority position among current English Bibles.

One more thing is worth knowing about how the New Testament uses this oracle. Hebrews 12:26 takes up Haggai 2:6, the shaking of heaven and earth, and applies it. It does not take up verse 7. The part of Haggai's promise the New Testament quotes directly is the shaking, not the desire.

Hawn's History of Hymns article and Fenner's Hymnology Archive entry are the two strongest sources on the text, and neither mentions the orphans story. What is documented for those months is anti-Methodist mob violence in Wednesbury and Walsall running into February 1744, and Charles Wesley's separate 1744 collection Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution.

Sources

• Come, Thou long expected Jesus (text authority) — Hymnary.org · (Charles Wesley, first published in Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord, 1744; originally two stanzas of eight lines; scripture index lists Haggai 2:4, 2:6-9 and 2:7)
• Come, thou long-expected Jesus — Hymnology Archive, Chris Fenner · (Haggai 2:7 named as the text behind the hymn's language about the desire of the nations; textual revisions of 1762 and 1777; dates the printing to December 1745)
• History of Hymns: Hymn expresses longing for arrival of our Savior — C. Michael Hawn, Discipleship Ministries · (1744 collection reprinted twenty times in Wesley's lifetime; two eight-line stanzas; six imperative verbs and a tone of supplication)
• Come Thou Long Expected Jesus — PraiseCharts (Keith & Kristyn Getty) · (album Sing! An Irish Christmas - Live At The Grand Ole Opry House, 2019; arrangers Keith Getty, Paul Campbell, John Langley; CCLI 7138252; no scripture references listed by the rights holder)
• Come Thou Long Expected Jesus — Getty Music Store · (same album and 2019 release; lists Charles Wesley as songwriter; © 2019 Getty Music Publishing)
• Haggai 2:7 — The Desire of the Nations, Wayne Jackson, Christian Courier · (the singular noun with plural verb; the case for keeping the personal reading)
• "The Desire Of All Nations" In Haggai 2:7: Messianic Or Not? — Herbert M. Wolf, JETS 19:2 (1976) · (abstract and opening only, remainder paywalled; documents the move to impersonal renderings from the 1901 ASV onward)
• Hymns for the nativity of Our Lord. 1744 — Internet Archive (Eighteenth Century Collections microfilm) · (title page dated 1744)
• Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus — Wikipedia · (source of the orphans and class-divide claim, which the two hymnological sources above do not carry; also lists the STUTTGART, HYFRYDOL and CROSS OF JESUS tunes)
• Wednesbury riots, 1743-1744 — A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland · (documented anti-Methodist mob violence running into February 1744)