LSB 940
Dr. Arnold Burron
A look at verse 4:
Thou art King of glory, Christ:
Son of God, yet born of Mary;
For us sinners sacrificed,
And to death a tributary:
First to break the bars of death,
Thou has opened Heaven to faith.
One line in verse four of this hymn is challenging, simply because the translator needed line 4 to rhyme with “Son of God, yet born of Mary” in line 2. The translator came up with the line, “and to death a tributary.” The hymn then went like this,
Son of God, yet born of Mary; And to death a tributary.
Here’s where the hymn can get complicated: a “tribute” is something paid to someone who is owed something. “Death” was the “payment”—the tribute— that was owed to “sin.” Sinners had to “pay tribute,” so in that sense, sinners were “tributaries”—or “payment makers.” Instead of having us pay with eternal death, the “payment,” or “tribute” was paid by Jesus, who was the “payment-maker” or “the tributary.” Jesus paid the tribute with His Death.
Once the payment was made, Death could not hold us with its “bars.” Jesus rose from the dead. We, too, shall rise from the dead. Heaven is open to those who have faith.
It’s complicated getting through the verse, but only because the hymn was translated from German, and a rhyming word was needed. The word “tributary” is accurate, but it used so rarely in the way it’s used in this hymn, that it is easy not to understand it.
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