REg peom

The seventeenth century Dutch writer, Jacobus Revius, described our involvement in Jesus’ sufferings and death in the following powerful lines, under the title, “He Bore Our Anguish” (translated from the Dutch by Charles D. Tate, Jr., associate professor of English at Brigham Young University; published in BYU Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, Autumn 1974, 103; also found in our volume on the Gospels entitled Verse by Verse: The Four Gospels, published by Deseret Book):


It was not the Jews, Lord Jesus, who crucified you,
Nor the traitors who dragged you to the law,
Nor the contemptuous who spit in your face,
Nor those who bound you, and hit you full of wounds,
And it was not the soldiers who with evil hands
Lifted up the reed or the hammer,
Or set that cursed wood on Golgotha,
Or cast lots and gambled for your robe;
It is I, O Lord, it is I who have done it,
I am the heavy tree that overburdened you,
I am the rough bands that bound you,
The nail, the spear, and the cords that whipped you,
The bloodied crown that tore your head:
All this happened, alas! for my sins.