# Joy to the World: lyrics with the Bible verses behind them

Joy to the World is Psalm 98 in verse. Isaac Watts wrote it about the Lord coming to rule the earth, with the sea, the rivers, and the hills joining in. It never mentions the manger, the shepherds, or Bethlehem. Its third verse reaches back to the curse on the ground in Genesis 3.

Words: Isaac Watts, 1719, from Psalm 98. Music: “Antioch,” arranged by Lowell Mason, 1839. The words are in the public domain.

Source: https://www.lumin.faith/christmas/carols/joy-to-the-world. Scripture quotations are from the Lumin Translation.

## The words, line by line

### Verse 1

- Joy to the world, the Lord is come ([Psalm 98:4](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#4): “Shout for joy to Yahweh, all the earth; burst into song, sing for joy, and sing praises.”)
- Let earth receive her King ([Psalm 98:6](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#6): “With trumpets and the sound of the ram’s horn, shout for joy before the King, Yahweh.”)
- Let every heart prepare him room ([Isaiah 40:3](https://www.lumin.faith/read/isaiah/40#3): “A voice is calling out: In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh; in the desert make a straight highway for our God.”) Beyond the Bible: Watts’s own line. Psalm 98 does not say it.
- And heaven and nature sing ([Psalm 96:11](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/96#11): “Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and all that fills it.”)
- And heaven and nature sing
- And heaven, and heaven and nature sing

### Verse 2

- Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns ([Psalm 97:1](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/97#1): “Yahweh reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad.”)
- Let men their songs employ ([Psalm 98:5](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#5): “Sing praises to Yahweh with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of singing.”)
- While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains ([Psalm 98:8](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#8): “Let the rivers clap their hands; let the mountains sing for joy together”)
- Repeat the sounding joy ([Psalm 98:8](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#8))

### Verse 3

- No more let sins and sorrows grow ([Genesis 3:17](https://www.lumin.faith/read/genesis/3#17): “To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree that I commanded you about, saying, ‘Do not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed on your account; through painful labor you will eat from it all the days of your life.”)
- Nor thorns infest the ground ([Genesis 3:18](https://www.lumin.faith/read/genesis/3#18): “It will bring up thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants that grow in the field.”)
- He comes to make his blessings flow ([Romans 5:20](https://www.lumin.faith/read/romans/5#20): “The law entered the picture so that the trespass would grow. But where sin grew, grace overflowed far beyond it,”)
- Far as the curse is found ([Revelation 22:3](https://www.lumin.faith/read/revelation/22#3): “There will no longer be anything accursed. God’s throne and the Lamb’s will be in the city, and his servants will serve him in worship.”)

### Verse 4

- He rules the world with truth and grace ([Psalm 98:9](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#9): “before Yahweh, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with fairness.”)
- And makes the nations prove ([Psalm 98:2](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#2): “Yahweh has made his salvation known; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.”)
- The glories of his righteousness ([Psalm 98:2](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#2))
- And wonders of his love ([Psalm 98:1](https://www.lumin.faith/read/psalm/98#1): “Sing to Yahweh a new song, for he has done wonders; his right hand and his holy arm have won him victory.”)

## Where it goes beyond the Bible

- It is not about the birth of Jesus. Watts wrote about the Lord coming to reign, which many read as his return. Churches started singing it at Christmas later.
- “Prepare him room” is Watts’s own line. Many hear Luke 2:7, where there was no space for them, but the psalm does not say it.

## The story of the carol

Isaac Watts, an English pastor, published it in 1719 in “The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament.” He rewrote each psalm as if David had known Jesus. This one is the second half of Psalm 98.

For a century it was a psalm, not a Christmas song. In 1839 the American music teacher Lowell Mason put it to a tune he called “Antioch,” with phrases that sound like Handel’s Messiah. That tune made it a carol.