Joy To The World

Amy Grant is the eighth artist on this backlog to record Watts's carol this cycle, and hers is one of the only versions in the batch to keep the text's rarely-sung third verse: "no more will sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground... far as the curse was found." That line reaches back to Genesis 3:17's account of the ground itself being cursed after Adam's sin — "cursed is the ground for your sake... thorns also and thistles it will yield to you."

Watts's promise that the blessing spreads "far as the curse was found" anticipates Romans 8:21's claim that creation itself "will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God" — the curse's reach and the remedy's reach matching each other, verse for verse. Grant's version also swaps Watts's "heaven and nature sing" for "Saints and angels sing," a textual variant found in some hymnals that shifts the chorus of praise from creation broadly to worshippers specifically, without changing the carol's underlying claim.