Rock of Ages (Chanukah hymn)
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- For the original Hebrew version, see Maoz Tzur
Rock of Ages (in Hebrew, Maoz Tsur) is by far the best-known Chanukah hymn. It was written in the thirteenth century, by a poet known only by the name "Mordechai", an acrostic spelled out by the first letters of the five original stanzas.
The first stanza, based on Psalm 31, celebrates God's continued delivering power. In the popular if somewhat loose translation by M. Jastrow and G. Gottheil:
Rock of Ages let our song,
Praise thy saving power;
Thou amidst the raging foes,
Wast our shelt'rng tower.
Furious they assailed us,
But Thine arm availed us,
And Thy word broke their sword,
When our own strength failed us.
And Thy word broke their sword,
When our own strength failed us.
The next four stanzas celebrate, in chronological order, God's deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleucid (the "Greeks" of the Chanukah celebration) empires.
A sixth stanza, added during bitter persecutions in the sixteenth century, called for God's deliverance from Roman (i.e. Christian) powers.[1]
