Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748). This paraphrase of the second part of Psalm 72 (verses 8-19) appeared in The Psalms of David (1719), with the title ‘Christ’s Kingdom among the Gentiles’. It had eight stanzas. Psalm 72 is one of the ‘royal psalms’ and is a prayer to God for King Solomon. In both parts of the paraphrase Watts makes the psalm refer to Christ (his usual procedure) and in the second part he begins by naming him: ‘Jesus shall reign…’. He then uses the psalm as a springboard for his own very free rendering. Stanzas 2, 3 and 7 are normally omitted in modern hymnbooks (2 and 3 describe the effects of Christian mission to the ‘barbarous nations’ of the...