The highlight of this hymn is the last stanza which is actually a Jewish poem called the Haddamut. It was written in 1050 AD by a Jewish man named Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor (synagogue singer) in Worms, Germany. What makes the Haddamut even more amazing is to think what life would have been like for an 11th century Jew in Germany. Then in 1917 in America it was found written on the wall of a man who had died in an insane asylum. He obviously wrote it in a period of sanity. This inspired a California pastor, Frederick Lehman to write two more verses and a refrain. His daughter-in-law Claudia arranged the music and they called the hymn "The Love of God".
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
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