O Come, Emmanuel 6: Night’s Flight

My sixth Christmastide reflection on that beautiful carol, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, focusses upon its third verse’s first two lines:

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Having previously described the Lord Jesus as the source of light, the hymn describes the effect: dispersal. The dark clouds which render a dark, winter evening darker still must flee, while black shadows bolt from His radiance. We in northern England might be especially familiar with the heavy grey rainclouds gathering in a gloomy sky. Even if you dwell by the balmy Mediterranean or live in sunny Oklahoma, however, the dark shadows of death are always lengthening and approaching, creeping ever closer and nearer. Death stalks its quarry, usually hunting us after many years, but occasionally snatching us in childhood or youth. The hymn surely alludes to the twenty-third Psalm, in which David sings:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Stronger than death and taller than its valley is Great David’s Greater Son, the Day-Spring, the Day-Star, the Day-Maker.

This is the real meaning of Christmas.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel;
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by Thine Advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,
In ancient times didst give the law,
In cloud, and majesty, and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

From the text of the 1851 translation by John Mason Neale of the twelfth-century hymn Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, published in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861)