Mary, Did You Know?

Pentatonix performs “Mary, Did You Know?” as a Christmas a cappella arrangement, with the voices layered to build from a quiet opening. The lyric is a string of questions put to Mary about her newborn son. Each begins “Mary, did you know,” and each describes what he would do: walk on water, give sight to a blind man, calm the storm with his hand, and save “our sons and daughters.”

The questions grow in scale. One says the child “has come to make you new” and “this child that you've delivered will soon deliver you.” Another says he “has walked where angels trod” and, in the best known line, “when you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God.” The bridge lists miracles in a run: “the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again, the lame will leap, the dumb will speak.” It ends by calling the infant “Lord of all creation,” “heaven's perfect Lamb,” and “the great I am.”

The miracle list follows Isaiah 35:5-6. The birth setting is Luke 2:7, “the great I am” echoes Jesus' words in John 8:58, and “Lamb” points to John 1:29.