Text · full lyrics
Oh, bless the Lord, my soul!
Let all within me join
And aid my tongue to bless His name
Whose favors are divine.
Oh, bless the Lord, my soul,
Nor let His mercies lie
Forgotten in unthankfulness
And without praises die.
'Tis He forgives thy sins;
'Tis He relieves thy pain;
'Tis He that heals thy sicknesses
And makes thee young again.
He crowns thy life with love
When ransomed from the grave;
He that redeemed my soul from hell
Hath sov'reign pow'r to save.
He fills the poor with good;
He gives the suff'rers rest;
The Lord hath judgments for the proud
And justice for th' oppressed.
His wondrous works and ways
He made by Moses known,
But sent the world His truth and grace
By His beloved Son.
The lyricist
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was a Congregationalist minister who spent his working life pastoring an Independent church in London — one of the Nonconformist congregations that stood outside the Church of England — for years at the meeting house on Mark Lane. He grew up inside that tradition, his father jailed more than once for it, and grew impatient with the only church music it permitted: stiff, archaic metrical settings of the Psalms, sung from a worn psalter that one later critic dismissed as written with the best intentions and the worst taste. The story goes that he complained once too often, and his father told him to write something better if he thought he could; the hymn he produced in answer, "Behold the Glories of the Lamb," was the first of more than eight hundred he would write. He spent much of what followed giving the Psalms fresh English settings of his own — which is where "O Bless the Lord, My Soul" comes from, his recasting of Psalm 103 in place of the clumsy older version then in the books.