All we like sheep have gone astray … from basic Bible literacy?

All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.

So wrote GF Handel in the second chorus of Part II of his great oratorio Messiah. Keen readers may have spotted that this is not an original thought; Handel drew on Isaiah 53:4-6. In fact, Messiah is fundamentally a musical Bible study on the saving work of Jesus, and it is often performed at Easter, so get along if you can. (Here’s a performance for Sydney readers.)

At a recent rehearsal for another Messiah performance, the “All we like sheep have gone astray” chorus was being practised, and the conductor remarked that she thought Handel probably inserted this line as a joke to make fun of the British aristocracy.

One of the violinists suggested that this was most likely not the case, and, in fact, the ‘joke’ line was a direct quote from Isaiah, which presented the fundamental need about why the Messiah needed to come in the first place! The conductor refused the suggestion and instead asked the orchestra to play in a light-hearted, joking manner.

This is yet another example of why we need to keep doing everything we can to raise the level of biblical literacy and gospel awareness in our communities.