Is "El Shaddai" supposedly a sad song?

[Lik3]

Would you consider "El Shaddai" a sad song? I realize that most Christian songs evoke numerous emotions. However, I find that song so sad that I cry. Maybe I need to listen to this song again.

 

[brinny]

Would you consider "El Shaddai" a sad song? I realize that most Christian songs evoke numerous emotions. However, I find that song so sad that I cry. Maybe I need to listen to this song again.

Why do you find it sad?

 

[miamited]

Hi lik,

I find it to be fairly melancholy. It expresses the history of Israel's relationship with God. Quite honestly, that relationship was rarely good, as God seemed to see it. It talks about how His people didn't understand what God was doing. This is the same cry that God made to Israel through His prophet Isaiah. The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.

So yes, I find the song to have a certain amount of melancholy as it describes Israel's dullness in thinking and understanding of what God was working to accomplish through them. However, as a Gentile, we should feel a certain amount of relief that they didn't possibly. Would salvation have come to the whole world if Jesus hadn't died? If Israel had, as Daniel said they were to do, crowned Jesus as their king, would there have been salvation for the rest of us? But, we must temper that with the knowledge that, even though Israel was defiant against God, it all worked out as it was supposed to according to the prophecies of Jesus' sacrifice for sin.

The Scriptures tell us that it was even a part of God's work to harden Israel's heart, but still, they had no understanding of what they were doing. They were merely actors in a great and wonderful and glorious plan of God to save some from His eternal wrath.

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

 

[brinny]

Hi lik,

I find it to be fairly melancholy. It expresses the history of Israel's relationship with God. Quite honestly, that relationship was rarely good, as God seemed to see it. It talks about how His people didn't understand what God was doing. This is the same cry that God made to Israel through His prophet Isaiah. The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.

So yes, I find the song to have a certain amount of melancholy as it describes Israel's dullness in thinking and understanding of what God was working to accomplish through them. However, as a Gentile, we should feel a certain amount of relief that they didn't possibly. Would salvation have come to the whole world if Jesus hadn't died? If Israel had, as Daniel said they were to do, crowned Jesus as their king, would there have been salvation for the rest of us? But, we must temper that with the knowledge that, even though Israel was defiant against God, it all worked out as it was supposed to according to the prophecies of Jesus' sacrifice for sin.

The Scriptures tell us that it was even a part of God's work to harden Israel's heart, but still, they had no understanding of what they were doing. They were merely actors in a great and wonderful and glorious plan of God to save some from His eternal wrath.

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

You missed the part about the widow/outcast on her knees?

 

[Darkhorse]

I don't find it sad at all. It's written in a minor key (as is most Jewish music) which sounds "sad" to western ears, but the message recaps God's faithfulness and love, even to His unfaithful people.

I find it hauntingly beautiful.
Lots of music makes me cry, sad or not.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Tears from music don't always mean sadness.

As others have said, it does have a melancholy sound, in a minor key. It is fitting, IMO, for the people and period it describes.

 

[FireDragon76]

Sentimentalism is not necessarily the same as sadness.

One of my favorite Lutheran hymns ("If you but trust in God to guide you") is in a minor key.

 

[Dave-W]

No - it is not a sad song. At all.

And minor key does not mean sad either: