Lord God, you now have set your servant free

Lord God, you now have set your servant free. Rae E. Whitney* (1927- ). This is Whitney’s version of the Song of Simeon, the ‘Nunc dimittis’*, Luke 2: 29-32, in the prayer-book translation of 1976. She was reading Compline with her husband, when ‘this metrical hymn leapt out from the text for me to catch’ (Glover et al., 1990-94, Volume 3B, p. 936). It was published in Whitney’s Fig Tree Songs I (Scottsbluff, Nebraska: Fig Tree Press, 1981), and became widely known when was included in H82. It has subsequently appeared in Together in Song: the Australian Hymn Book II, the Presbyterian Hymnal and the Canadian VU. JRW Further Reading Raymond F. Glover, et al., The Hymnal 1982 Companion (New...