“Jehovah, Lord of Heaven and Earth” (Hymn no. 269), anonymous in the 1985 hymnal, was written by Joseph Proud, author of “Know Then That Every Soul Is Free.” It was first published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Use of the Lord’s New Church (1790), in six stanzas of four lines. The original first line is “Jehovah, Lord of Truth Divine.”
An altered form of this hymn, as found in Select Hymns; for the Use of the Lord’s New Church, Signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation (1798), is the one borrowed by the Latter-day Saints. This five stanza form utilizes stanzas one, three, five and six of Proud’s original, as stanzas one, three, four, and five, respectively. The second stanza, commencing “We long to see thy church increase,” is taken from another Proud hymn, “Ye Gentile Lands No Longer Mourn.”
The first Latter-day Saint printing of “Jehovah, Lord of Heaven and Earth” was in the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star on April 21, 1860, and from there it entered the official hymn book in 1863. It has been included in every subsequent hymnal.
Sources:
Joseph Proud, Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Use of the Lord’s New Church, Signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1790), 208, 254; Select Hymns; for the Use of the Lord’s New Church, Signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation (Manchester: Sowler and Russell, 1798), 62-63; “Prayer For the Spread of the Gospel,” Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, April 21, 1860, 256.
Latter-day Saint Hymnology 