Mary didn't just meekly respond "I am the Lord's servant" when the angel Gabriel visited her. God had selected the perfect mother for his incarnation, and like Miriam, Deborah, and other mevaserot in Hebrew history, she wrote a hymn of rejoicing, drawing from the prophesy in Isaiah 61. Decades later, Mary's hymn was passed on to Luke and shared with the rest of the world.
This is another hymn I learned as a teenager. The first verse and the chorus were published in early editions of Scripture in Song through the 1970s, but I encountered the longer version around that time too. I am indebted to the musicologist Mary and her site GodSongs.net for the full text. https://www.godsongs.net/2013/05/magnificat-my-soul-doth-magnify-lord.html.
I wanted to acknowledge the hymn's musical precedents, so you'll hear Miriam's tambourine dancing among the percussionists in the arrangement. The refrain after each verse makes for a rather long hymn, but I didn't want to cut anything from Mary's Magnificat, so I haven't included the Doxology that is sometime used as a final verse. It still runs to almost four minutes, making it one of the longest inclusions in the Hymnody Project.
I'm excited to share this hymn with you, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed crafting the arrangement, and that it's useful for you and yours in your own spiritual journey.
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