"1 Lo, how a Rose e'er
From tender hath !
Of lineage coming
As men of have sung.
It came, a flower ,
Amid the cold of
When half-gone was the night.
2 'twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind:
With we behold it,
The virgin mother .
To show love aright
She bore to men a
When half-gone was the night.
3 This Flower, whose tender
With fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendour
The darkness everywhere. man, yet God,
From sin and death, He saves us
And lightens every load"
"Es ist ein Reis entsprungen" is among the very oldest Christmas hymns in modern use. The text dates from the 15th or 16th century. The earliest extant manuscript was made by the Carthusian monks at Saint Alban's monastery in Trier and is dated 1580. A 1599 version was published at Cologne in 1599; it has twenty-three stanzas.
There are many translations of "Es ist ein Reis" but the most widely used (e.g. in the most English-language hymnals) is that done by Theodore Baker (1851-1934). He was a man of diverse skills and learning. He was the editor of "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians" (1900). He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the music of the Seneca people of New York State. For 34 years, he was a literary editor and translator for G. Schirmer, Inc., in New York City.
As was typical of the time of its composition, the lyrics draw extensively on Holy Scripture but do so in an allusive, poetic way. The first two stanzas are built on the prophecies in Isaiah 11:1 and Isaiah 35:1-2 and on the nativity narratives in Luke 1-2 and Matthew 2. The third stanza touches on the introduction in John 1.
The hymn is appointed to be sung during Advent, at lessons and carols on Christmas Eve, during Christmastide, and on Twelfth Night. It is especially meaningful when sung following a liturgical reading of Isaiah 11 ("And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:" KJV).
The most common tune (the traditional melody and the harmony of the German composer Michael Praetorius done in 1609) sounds rather like a Renaissance madrigal. In those situations where there is an accomplished choir, it can be beautifully sung in four parts without accompaniment.
The "tender stem" in the first stanza is a direct reference to the "rod out of the stem of Jesse" and to the "Branch [which] shall grow out of his roots." The "men of old" are those many prophets who foresaw the birth of Jesus. When the text sets this event "amid the cold of winter," it is more folkloric than meteorological, limited to the Northern Hemisphere.
The line which concludes both the first and second stanzas is again more metaphoric than chronological. No one present was wearing a watch. While the Holy Scriptures are silent on the specific hour of Jesus' birth, it is intensely traditional, poetic and symbolic that he was born at night. Saint Luke says that it was nighttime when the angel startled the shepherds by announcing Jesus' birth (2:8). The notion that Jesus, the "Light of the World," entered the world in deepest darkness suggests midnight. The tradition of Midnight Mass reinforces it. A popular carol like "It came upon a midnight clear" is as specific as it is indeterminate.
The third stanza affirms Orthodox and Catholic theology: that Jesus was both perfectly human and yet, at the same time, perfectly God. This is asserted in the line "True man, yet very God." The use of the adjective "very" in this context means truly, actually. The Chalcedonian Definition of 451, expresses this Christology: Jesus is "perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood" and "truly God and truly man" and "in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably." The fact that this is hard for some people to understand and hard for others to believe does not detract from its centrality to Christian theology, just as "Es ist ein Reis" asserts.
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