This Is The Day

This is the day, this is the day
that the Lord has made,
that the Lord has made;
we will rejoice,
we will rejoice and be glad in it,
and be glad in it.

This is the day that the Lord has made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.
This is the day,
this is the day that the Lord has made.
 — Les Garrett [Paraphraser] (1967)

Psalm 118’s authorship is debated — some attribute it to King David, others to unknown songwriters composing for public worship. Regardless of who wrote it, the psalm has been sung with gratitude toward God for millennia.

In 1719, Isaac Watts, frustrated with the heartless psalm singing of his time, criticized the singing at his church. His father challenged him: “Well then, young man, why don’t you give us something better to sing?” Watts took up the challenge and began writing hymns, approaching the psalms through the lens of the New Testament and composing freer paraphrases rather than strict translations. Applying this approach to Psalm 118, as he did with many other psalms, he gave us “This Is the Day the Lord Hath Made.”

In 1967, Les Garrett, a man from Matamata, New Zealand, set a folk tune from Fiji to the psalm’s words, giving it the sound and lyrics we know today.