Every December, churches sing a prayer whose roots go back more than a thousand years. “O come, O come, Emmanuel” grew out of the seven “O Antiphons,” short Latin prayers sung in the last week before Christmas, each calling on Jesus by a title from the Old Testament. Read backwards, the first letters of the seven titles spell the Latin words “ero cras”: tomorrow I will be there.
Four of those titles come straight from the Hebrew prophets: Immanuel, the Dawn, the Root of Jesse and the Key of David. Each was given centuries before Bethlehem to people who were waiting, and each one tells us something about the One they were waiting for.
The chapters
- O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: 4 Hebrew Names of Jesus
- 1. Immanuel: God with us
- 2. The Branch: the dawn from on high
- 3. The Root of Jesse: before David and after him
- 4. The Key of David: the door no one can shut
Scripture it opens
Isaiah 7:14 Isaiah 8:10 Matthew 1:21-23 Matthew 28:20 Jeremiah 23:5 Zechariah 3:8 Zechariah 6:12 Luke 1:78-79 Isaiah 11:1 Isaiah 11:10 Romans 15:12 Matthew 22:41-45 Revelation 22:16 Isaiah 22:22-25 Isaiah 9:6 Revelation 3:7-8 Revelation 22:20
