"In his hands are all the corners of the earth."

"Let all the world in every corner sing:

My God and King. 

When George Herbert wrote about the cosmic praise song coming from every corner of the world he was not announcing his membership of the flat earth society. He was using terminology that would be familiar enough to those who would read and sing his poem, 'Antiphon 1'.

The phrase "the four corners of the earth" occur several times in the King James Version, by Herbert's time becoming increasingly familiar as the biblical translation of choice. Commentators cite Psalm 95.1-4 as a textual source echoed in Herbert's poem. In particular, "In his hands are all the corners of the earth." (v4) By the early 17th Century, science and cosmology had established by experimentation and empirical observation that planets are round - Galileo and Kepler had seen to that. The affirmation that "In his  hands are all the corners of the earth" is an assertion of God's sovereignty over all creation, God's presence in and through all that exists, and therefore the trustworthiness and benevolence of the one who is "My God and king."

There is an all-inclusiveness in the invitation to every corner of the world to sing the Creator-Redeemer's praise. Indeed, God is not truly praised until the reverberations of worship are heard and felt from all the world and every corner. One of the more suggestive and plausible explanations of what Herbert might mean by "the four corners of the earth" comes from Nicholas Jones:   

"We are to envision a "chorus" of affirmation, a group agreed on a common statement of worship. In a schismatic and doubting world,that's no small step. This grand chorus imagines an even grander choral unity-that "all the world" might sing this one common text. Apparently, heretics have been converted, deep hatreds among the people of the world have been miraculously settled; and the world joins together to welcome its "God and King!" ¹

Herbert was writing in a context where such communal and confessional agreement was very far from actuality, but it was legitimate aspiration and a vision to be sought and prayed for. 

Of the other occurrences of "the four corners of the earth" the most interesting is Isaiah 11.11-12. The prophet addresses a dispersed people and speaks of a great gathering initiated, instigated and implemented by God - it will all be God's doing as he acts in sovereign faithfulness.

Isaiah 11.12 reads: "He will raise an ensign for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." But these prophecies of return and regathering follow on from a verse which is less a geography lesson than a theological reconfiguring of history, both of the people of God and the other peoples of earth over whom God is also Lord. Isaiah's visions of a renewed creation, a restored and returned Israel, and of a Messiah as the light of the nations have a universal impulse.

Isaiah 11.11 reads: "In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant which is left of his people from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the costlands of the sea." John Sawyer is quick to point out that Hamath is in the North, Egypt is in the South, Elam and Shinar in the East, and the coastlands to the West. Isaiah the poet more than hints at the four primary points of the compass, the four corners of the earth. ²

Was Herbert likely to build a poem around an obscure Isaianic text? He was undoubtedly familiar with such prominent canonical texts as Psalms, Isaiah,the Gospels, and the Pauline Epistles. Whether or not there is dependence on, or allusion to this Isaianic text, its explicit use of the phrase "the four corners of the earth" in 17th Century translation of the biblical text puts it well within Herbert's semantic options. In addition, the biblical context of communal gathering and return to the place of blessing and promise, makes Isaiah's text an important reference point for the central exhortation of the poem, and the longings of the poet for Christians  from 'every corner' of the world, to sing from the same hymn sheet in choral unity and personal confession:

"My God and King." 

In other words, Herbert's own historical context of the people of God dispersed, divided, and at odds with each other, make 'Antiphon 1' a profoundly aspirational hymn, a longing that what is not yet true, should some day, please God, become actual. "Let all the world in every corner sing" is the poet's hymn of hoped for unity and harmony, a song of praise from every corner of the world to the God "in whose hands are all the corners of the earth." (Psalm 95.4)

^{1 Nicholas Jones, 'Texts and Contexts: Two Languages in George Herbert's Poetry.' Studies in Philology, Vol. 79, No. 2, (Spring 1982) P.166}

^{2. John Sawyer, Isaiah vol 1. DSB. Saint Andrews Press, 1984. P. 125. Gordon McConville, Isaiah. BCOTPB, 2023. Pages 185-189.}