Well, welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, we are going to do some Sherlock Holmes detective work on a hymn.

We're going to look at the beloved hymn, Be Thou My Vision, and see if we can figure

out when and where the lyrics for this hymn come from.

If we go to the third stanza, we see lots of clues.

First, we see the expression, battle shield, and then we see the expression, high tower.

Well, that all sounds rather medieval to me, and then we see the word dignity.

Now, in our moment, dignity means the worth and value of every human being.

Every person is created in the image of God, and therefore every person has dignity.

But back in the ancient and medieval world, dignity iscribed status, or even nobility to a person.

Much akin to our word, dignitary.

So we put some of those clues together and we begin to see the when.

But what about the where? Well, that clue comes in the fourth stanza,

and in a phrase that is repeated at the beginning of the fifth stanza,

and it's this phrase, the high king of heaven.

Now, if you were to search Scripture, you would find the expression king of heaven,

and Daniel 437.

Nebuchadnezzar, after his humiliation, praises and honors the king of heaven.

But not this expression, high king of heaven.

It is certainly in concert with the biblical teaching of God,

but we don't find this exact expression in the Bible.

So where does high king come from?

...