I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.
Today’s song is You Shall Go Out With Joy.
It was one of many songs that emerged in the 1970s that had Jewish-style and folk‑style melodies. Here’s a few others that come to mind:
- Come and Praise the Living God
- Bring a Psalm
- Lord Give Me Also Springs of Water
- Through Our Lord, We Shall Do Valiantly
- Jubilate
My mother used to say that it reminder her of the soundtrack of an old cowboy film 😀. Stuart Dauermann, a Messianic Jewish composer, wrote the melody.
It’s entirely based on a passage from Isaiah:
Isaiah 55:12
You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
It predicted happier times ahead, using symbolic language. The Jews were exiled in Babylon, where they mourned, as can be illustrated by the old Boney M song, “By the Rivers of Babylon“, based on Psalm 137. I knew little about the Old Testament when I first heard that song as a 16-year-old punk rocker back in 1978 😀.
But after a few years, I learned so much more, and I spent happy times singing “You shall go out with joy”. Things did get better for the Jews after the exile, but they didn’t get much better because they didn’t completely commit themselves to God. And much of Christian church history follows a similar pattern.
Perhaps we’ll never fully experience this kind of joy before we get to heaven, but the very thought of the song makes me feel joyful. And sometimes, when I feel close to God in a beautiful place, it almost feels like nature is singing to me. Other Old Testament writers had similar experiences. Think of Psalm 19 and 96
Psalm 19:1-4
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
Psalm 96:11-12
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
I wish that we had more songs like “You Shall Go Out With Joy”. It’s getting close to 45 years now since I heard it sung in church. It felt very modern at the time. It’s nice to see that you can still find it on YouTube. This isn’t true of all the choruses from the 1960s-1980s, though you can find collections of worship songs of that era. It’s a joy to discover them all.
Here are various versions of the song, I wonder how people interpret it? Are we singing about heaven or are we singing about the joy we feel when we are close to God on earth. Maybe this verse points us to the truth:
1 Peter 1:8
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
Hibernia Gospel 