Sung by the Congregation of First Plymouth Church led by the Plymouth Choir. Tom Trenney, organist. First Plymouth Church, Lincoln Nebraska, September 17, 2017.
Tom Trenney himself. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-50Eksw028IM.html. The link I sent doesn't seem to be 100% what he plays but it seems close enough.
Ruined by the politically-correct meddling with the first verse, "For HE is thy God and will still give thee aid", sing it like it was written, for God's sake....
I've always heard it as "For I am thy God." All the verses except the first are sung as if quoting God, so God is in the first person. Sounds like you are just looking for a reason to be mad.
There are two different things going on with the words of this hymn that we need to distinguish. One is the first person / third person divide in what to do with the words of this hymn, the other is the modern movement to make hymns (and liturgies) more "gender neutral". The former is a longstanding issue; the latter a much more recent phenomenon. What you identified with your quotation is actually an instance of the former. And that is not modern PC tinkering but rather a longstanding divide on how to render the words of this hymn. Do we sing them in the first person (i.e. are we singing God's words to us in the form he has said them to us) or do we sing them in the third person (i.e. are we singing truths about God based on his Word)? It would seem that the original form of this hymn was (with the exception of the first verse) God's words sung in the first person which makes it very unusual for a hymn -- so unusual that some hymnals change this and render the entire hymn in the third person. That has been a longstanding (centuries old) divide about what to do with the words of this hymn. You may be familiar with this hymn from hymnals that render it in the third person which makes hearing it sung in the first person sound unusual. So to take the second verse (from this video) as an example, when rendered in the first person it is: "Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;" "I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand." But rendered in the third person it would be: Fear not, he is with thee, O be not dismayed, For he is thy God and will still give thee aid; He’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand Upheld by His righteous, omnipotent hand. It would seem that the original form of this hymn is (from verse 2 onwards) written in the first person but that is very unusual for a hymn. I don't know of another hymn in the English language where this is the case. Because this is such an unusual practice some hymnals choose to render this hymn entirely in the third person -- and this is a practice that has been going on for centuries. However, other hymnals choose to render verse 2 onwards in the first person (which would appear to be how the hymn was originally written). As to the other issue, viz. changing the words to make them more "gender neutral", there is an instance of this in the first verse of this recording. To avoid referring to God by the gender specific pronoun "he" the editors have substituted the noun "God" for the pronoun "he" and have substituted the passive voice ("what more can be said") for the active voice ("What more can he say"). Original wording: How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word! What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Modern, "gender neutral" rendering: How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his God's excellent word! What more can be said than to you God hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
