A Word, Please: He, Him and a hymn — pronouns in a choir loft

There’s a hymn sung in reader Rachel’s church, “Hymn of Heaven,” that has her wondering about pronouns.

The lyric in question is “Standing face to face with He who died and rose again.”

Here’s Rachel: “That ‘He who died’ gets me every time. I feel like it should read, ‘Standing face to face with Him’ rather than He. I even brought it up with the song leader at our church (she tried to convince me that ‘He who died and rose again’ was a name. What, like Voldemort? lol. I obviously don’t agree.)

“So I was curious. What do you think? Should I keep singing ‘Him’ (while everyone around me sings ‘He’) or bow to peer pressure and conform to the masses?”

A lot of interesting stuff there, some of it my area of expertise, some not. Let’s begin with the part in which I have no authority to speak whatsoever.

No, I don’t think Rachel should belt out “Him” while everyone else in the congregation is singing “He.” And my reason has nothing to do with grammar. If the words included “Scooby-Doo,” I would feel the same. Song lyrics aren’t democratically chosen. The songwriters decide. Of course, she can sing “Him” or “Scooby-Doo” or anything else she likes. But singing “He” isn’t bowing to peer pressure. It’s just singing the song.

Grammar-wise, however, Rachel is right. In “Standing face to face with …” the word after “with” should be “him.” That’s because “with” is a preposition, prepositions take objects and “him” is the object form of the masculine singular pronoun. That’s basic grammar that we all know intuitively: Kim went with him (not he). Vic spoke to her (not she). Teachers yelled at us (not we).

The complicating factor in the song lyric, however, is “died and rose.” To die and to rise are verbs, and verbs need subjects. “He” is a subject pronoun, which is why we say he died (not him died) and he rose (not him rose). And it’s clear that in this sentence the “He” is the one doing the dying and rising. So it makes sense to think it’s the subject of the verbs. But it’s not. The subject of the verbs is “who” and together these words form the relative clause “who died and rose.”

A relative clause is essentially an adjective. It modifies a noun or pronoun. For instance, in “I saw the guy who stole your purse,” the relative clause just tells us which guy I saw. The clause modifies the noun “guy.”

So one stands face to face with him, regardless of whether “him” is followed by a modifying clause like “who died and rose.”

It’s not uncommon for a pronoun in the middle of a sentence to look like both an object and a subject. “Whoever” and “whomever” are the biggest troublemakers here.

Compare: “I will date whomever I like” with “I will date whoever likes me.” Both are correct. In the first one, “whomever,” which is an object pronoun, is the object of the verb “like.” In the second, the whole clause “whoever likes me” is the object of the verb “date.” Inside that clause is another verb, “likes,” which needs its own subject. That’s why we use the subject form “whoever” here.

Finally, as for the argument that “He who died and rose again” is a name: Well, can you say that any group of words could be a name for someone? Like “She Who Writes About the Pronouns”? I’ve never formed an opinion on the subject, but I think I’m with Rachel on this one.

— June Casagrande is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.