The Story Behind 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty'

The story behind Praise to the Lord, the Almighty spans two centuries and two languages. A German pastor named Joachim Neander wrote it in 1680, near the end of a life that ended far too soon; nearly two hundred years later, an English translator named Catherine Winkworth carried it across the Channel and gave it to us.

A short life, a lasting hymn

Joachim Neander was a German Reformed pastor and poet of the seventeenth century. He wrote some sixty hymns and loved to compose them while walking in a river valley near Düsseldorf — a valley that would later be named the Neander Valley in his honour, and which, centuries afterward, became famous for an entirely unrelated reason. Neander himself died of tuberculosis at about thirty years of age.

He wrote "Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren" in 1680. It is astonishing that a man with so little time produced a hymn of such settled, unhurried praise.

The translator who opened the German hymnal

Much of the great German hymn tradition is available to English singers because of Catherine Winkworth, a nineteenth-century Englishwoman who devoted herself to translating German hymns with rare skill. Her 1863 rendering of Neander's hymn — "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation" — is the version we sing. Like the two women behind Be Thou My Vision, Winkworth reminds us how much of our worship reaches us through the patient work of translators.

A hymn built on the psalms

Praise to the Lord is soaked in the closing psalms of the Bible, especially Psalms 103 and 150. It opens by summoning the whole self to worship: "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation! O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!"

From there it recounts what God has done: "who o'er all things so wondrously reigneth, shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth." It marvels at daily providence — "who hath fearfully, wonderfully, made thee" — and it ends where Psalm 150 ends, calling on everything with breath to join in: "let the Amen sound from His people again, gladly for aye we adore Him."

Why the story matters

This is a hymn of unqualified praise, and it is good for us to sing such hymns even — especially — when life is hard. Neander wrote it as a young man in failing health, and it carries not a trace of complaint. That is not because he had no troubles, but because the hymn deliberately fixes the eye on God's character rather than the singer's circumstances. To sing it is to practise the discipline of praise: naming who God is until the naming steadies the heart.

Sitting with it at home

If you would like to study this hymn slowly, our Praise to the Lord, the Almighty Deep-Dive Study gathers the full public-domain text, the story of Neander and Winkworth, the psalms behind each verse, and reflection questions for a week of readings.

You might also enjoy the story behind Amazing Grace or our list of five public-domain hymns every family should know.