The Odes of Solomon
Imagine stumbling upon a songbook buried in the sands of time—forty-two lyric hymns from the earliest centuries of Christianity, radiant with joy, intimacy, and wonder. This is the Odes of Solomon. Scholars sometimes call it the first Christian hymnbook. Written in the first person—“I”—they let us hear the voices of the first believers not as frightened subjects cowering before judgment, but as lovers singing their joy at being embraced by God.
Discovered in Syriac manuscripts in the early 1900s, the Odes had been lost for nearly nineteen hundred years. Their rediscovery was like the opening of a forgotten window, letting us hear the ancient echoes of a faith expressed not in guilt or fear, but in tenderness, water, light, and ecstatic union. No one knows who wrote them; the title “of Solomon” is symbolic rather than literal. Most likely, they were composed by an anonymous Jewish-Christian poet in Syria sometime in the late first or second century, written for worship, for breathing together in song.
One of the first Odes I ever read struck me to the core. It was as if someone across the centuries had given words to my own longing:
“I stretched out my hands to my Lord,
and to the Most High, I raised my voice.
And I spoke with the lips of my heart,
and when my voice reached Him, He heard me.
And His Word came to me,
and gave me the fruits of my labours;
And gave me rest by the grace of the Lord.
Hallelujah.”
Ode 37
Reading this, I could almost feel the voice of a soul unburdened. No heaviness. No tally of sins. Just a heart that speaks, and a God who listens. That is the pulse of the Odes: a relationship alive with trust and joy.
A Song of Being Planted
Another of the hymns takes the shape of a tree—its imagery rooted in the earth, yet stretching toward heaven. It spoke to me of stability, of belonging, of being nourished by the One who never abandons.
“My foundations were laid by the Hand of the Lord,
for He planted me.
He dug in the root and watered it,
and made it firm and blessed it,
and its fruits will be forever.
And it rooted deeply, and sprang up tall
and spread out its branches,
and became fully grown.
And the Lord alone is to be praised for His planting,
and for His skill in cultivation:
For His care, for the blessing of His Lips,
for a beautiful planting made by His Right Hand –
And for the existence of His planting
and for the Thought of His Mind.
Hallelujah.”
Ode 38B
How different this feels from the voices of later centuries that often framed God as distant or punishing. Here, the Divine is the patient gardener, tenderly tending the soul until it becomes strong enough to bear fruit.
Singing as Work, Singing as Joy
The anonymous author of the Odes clearly saw song itself as sacred labor—the kind of work that arises not from duty but from love. The metaphors tumble over one another: ploughman, helmsman, craftsman. Yet in every case, the poet insists that the real art is praise.
“As the work of the ploughman
is the work of the ploughshare,
And the work of the helmsman
is the piloting of the ship;
So, too, is my work the psalm of the Lord.
The singing of His praises are my art and my service,
because His love has nourished my heart,
and its fruits have poured forth from my lips.
My love is the Lord,
and therefore, I will sing to Him.
I am strengthened by His praise,
and I have faith in Him.
I will open my mouth,
and His spirit will speak through me
of the glory of the Lord and His beauty—
And the work of His hands,
and the craft of His fingers,
and the multitude of His mercies,
and the power of His Word.”
Ode 16
When I first read this, it felt like permission. Permission to let praise be something as natural as breath, something woven into the fabric of everyday life. These lines remind me that worship is not performance, nor is it fear-driven obedience. It is simply love finding its voice.
A Forgotten Echo of Joy
For me, discovering the Odes of Solomon was like finding an ancient echo of the healing I had always longed for. They reveal that the earliest voice of Christianity was not one of terror, but of intimacy. The God of the Odes is not a tyrant to appease, but a shelter in the storm, a friend who lifts us into joy.
Perhaps this is why the Odes still matter. They invite us to clothe ourselves in the same Spirit, to rest in the same joy, and to sing—no matter how faltering our voices—that love is, and always has been, our true inheritance.
*All odes are quoted from the excellent translation by John Davidson, available at: