"Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord"

Last summer, I noticed a small feature in "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord."  The fourth line of the third verse is "Let trials turn us not aside," sung to this musical phrase (the tune is "Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott"):

"Turn" is sung with a melisma (A C), so while it's negated, there's a sense of literal movement or metaphorical diverging.

LSB #497 "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord"

Biblical citations in the hymnal:  Luke 11:13, 1 Corinthians 12:13, John 16:13-14, 2 Timothy 1:14

Luke 11:13:  "'If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!'"

1 Corinthians 12:13:  "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit."

John 16:13-14:  "13 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.'"

2 Timothy 1:14:  "By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you."

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Luke 11:13 seems to appear in the first verse, but where the Biblical text is a summary statement, the hymn is more specific and implores:  "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord, / With all Your graces now out-poured / On each believer's mind and heart; / Your fervent love to them impart."

The unity mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:13 appears at the end of the first verse:  "In holy faith Your Church unite; / From ev'ry land and ev'ry tongue."

The verses from John 16 appear at the beginning of the second verse:  "Come, holy Light, guide divine, / Now cause the Word of life to shine. / Teach us to know our God aright / And call Him Father with delight."

The idea of "guard[ing] the good deposit entrusted to you" from 2 Timothy 1 seems to appear in the second half of the second verse:  "From ev'ry error keep us free; / Let none but Christ our master be / That we in living faith abide."  The third verse also deals with this, but referring more to action:  "Grant us the will Your work to do / And in Your service to abide."

"Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord"

I wrote about "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord" a couple years ago, but during the Pentecost service this year, I found something else to note.

In the first verse, there are the lines "In holy faith Your Church unite; / From ev'ry land and ev'ry tongue."  The second of these two lines is sung to this phrase (from the tune "Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott"):

"Land" and the second "ev'ry" are both sung with melismas (A Bb and G F E respectively), which gives a musical sense of the multitude of "ev'ry land and ev'ry tongue."

"Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord"

A couple months ago, I transcribed "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord" (coincidentally, it was the day after I'd sung it in church on Pentecost Sunday).  While transcribing it, I noticed a small connection between the text and the tune.

The first three lines are "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord, / With all Your graces now outpoured / On each believer's mind and heart."  The tune to which the hymn is sung is "Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott," and the second musical phrase of that tune descends at the end:

To some degree, the "outpour[ing]" in the text is represented by the descending phrase to which it's sung.

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For what it's worth:  "Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott" is essentially "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord" in German.  It's actually "Come, Holy Ghost, Lord God," so it seems that the English just shuffles this a bit and inserts "and" in order to get an extra syllable for that first phrase.