I Know That My Restorer Lives

I Know That My Restorer Lives
Job 19: 1- 29

In spring 1741 over a period of twenty-four days, George Frideric Handel set to music a compilation of scriptural texts, mostly from the Old Testament, that had been made by a landowner and patron of the arts called Charles Jennens. In this libretto Jennens was particularly concerned to encourage belief that Jesus was the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament, in a context where deists and Jews did not accept this belief. Whereas Handel’s career had been in the doldrums in the 1730s, Messiah restored him to public popularity. Part 3 of Messiah, which looks forward to the Messiah’s second coming, begins with lines from Job 19 (verses 25–27) in the King James Version:...