The vigil services of Christmas and Epiphany begin with the chanting of great compline, at the heart of which is the solemn singing of the canticle from the prophet Isaiah.
God is with us!
Understand all nations,
And submit yourselves,
For God is with us!
Hear this, even to the farthest bounds of the earth.
Submit yourselves, O mighty ones;
If you rise up again in your might,
You will be again overthrown.
The Lord shall destroy all who take counsel together,
And the word which you speak shall not abide with you.
For we do not fear your terror,
And we are not troubled.
But we will ascribe holiness to the Lord our God
And Him we will fear.
And if I put my trust in Him
He shall be my sanctification.
I will set my hope on Him
And through Him I shall be saved,
Lo, I and the children whom God has given me.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.
For to us a Child is born,
To us a Son is given.
And the government shall be upon His shoulder,
And of His peace there will be no end.
And His name shall be called the Angel of the
Great Council;
Wonderful; Counsellor;
The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father;
The Prince of Peace;
The Father of the world to come.
(Is 8: 9-10, 17-18; 9: 2, 6-7 LXX)1
These lines of the prophetic writing, which are included in many of the songs of the services of the Winter Pascha, are also referred to directly in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel” (which means, God with us). (Mt 1:18-23; IS 7:14)
It once happened that a person hearing the Orthodox vigil on Christmas for the first time in English was greatly angered by the singing of this prophetic canticle. She came to the priest, very upset, and asked him how such a terrible song could be sung in church. When the priest asked her which song she meant, and discovered which it was, he was surprised that this woman, who was a member of the Orthodox Church, had never heard the song before. It turned out that she had indeed heard it, but had never understood its meaning clearly because of the foreign language in which the services had been celebrated. Her difficulty was with the fact that the verse said, “God is with us!” and that it called all people to understand and submit themselves. How unbelievably presumptuous, she declared, that the Orthodox would solemnly proclaim that God was with them and then be even more arrogant in demanding the others understand and submit! Although the woman was gravely mistaken in her interpretation of the song, her attitude betrayed a common approach to religion in North America, where no church is supposed to think itself truer than others, and where submission in any form is considered to be degrading and demeaning.
The point of Isaiah’s canticle is not that God is with one particular group of people and not another. The point is rather that God is with all people in the coming of the promised Messiah. The writings of the prophet himself make this teaching quite clear, as the interpretation of the gospels and the apostolic writings of the Christian New Testament plainly testify.
~Adapted from Thomas Hopko, The Winter Pascha: Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season
1This translation is from the Church’s service book, following the Septuagint text. Some people think that the Isaiah canticle is specifically prescribed for the festivals of the lord’s Nativity and Epiphany, but actually the song is part of great compline whenever it is chanted, as, for example, on the evenings of the first week of Great lent.
