In spite of claims the Latin metrical hymn dates from the 11th or 12th century, it appears for the first time in the seventh edition of Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum (Cologne, 1710).

[5] Each stanza of the hymn consists of a four-line verse (in 88.88 meter with an AABB rhyme scheme), paraphrasing one of the O Antiphons.

[6] The 1710 text was published in Joseph Hermann Mohr's Cantiones Sacrae of 1878, with two additional verses of unknown authorship paraphrasing the two “missing” O Antiphons.

John Mason Neale published the five-verse Latin version, which he had presumably learned from Daniels' Thesaurus Hymnologicus,[6] in his 1851 collection Hymni Ecclesiae.

[9] Thomas Alexander Lacey (1853–1931) created a new translation (also based on the five-verse version) for The English Hymnal in 1906, but it received only limited use.

From this version, six lines date from the original 1851 translation by Neale, nine from the version from Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), eleven (including the two supplementary stanzas, following Coffin) from the Hymnal 1940, and the first two lines of the fourth stanza ("O come, thou Branch of Jesse's tree, \ free them from Satan's tyranny") are unique to this hymnal.

Draw nigh, Thou Orient, Who shalt cheer And comfort by Thine Advent here, And banish far the brooding gloom Of sinful night and endless doom.

O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel; That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny; From depths of hell Thy people save, And give them victory o'er the grave.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer, Our Spirits by Thine Advent here; Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight.

O come, Thou Key of David, come And open wide our heavenly home; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times didst give the law, In cloud, and majesty, and awe.

draw The quarry from the lion's claw; From the dread caverns of the grave, From nether hell, thy people save.

Pour on our souls thy healing light; Dispel the long night's lingering gloom, And pierce the shadows of the tomb.

The royal door fling wide and free; Safeguard for us the heavenward road, And bar the way to death's abode.

H. S. Coffin (1916) O come, Thou Wisdom from on high, And order all things, far and nigh; To us the path of knowledge show, And cause us in her ways to go.

O come, Desire of nations, bind All peoples in one heart and mind; Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease; Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

The familiar tune called "Veni Emmanuel" was first linked with this hymn in 1851, when Thomas Helmore published it in the Hymnal Noted, paired with an early revision of Neale's English translation of the text.

The mystery was settled in 1966 by British musicologist Mary Berry (also an Augustinian canoness and noted choral conductor), who discovered a 15th-century manuscript containing the melody in the National Library of France.

The melody used by Helmore is found here with the text "Bone Jesu dulcis cunctis" [Goodbye sweet Jesus to all]; it is part of a series of two-part tropes to the responsory Libera me.

As Berry (writing under her name in religion, Mother Thomas More) points out in her article on the discovery, "Whether this particular manuscript was the actual source to which [Helmore] referred we cannot tell at present."

Nonetheless, because of the nature of metrical hymns, it is perfectly possible to pair this tune with the Latin text; versions doing so exist by Zoltán Kodály,[17] Philip Lawson[18] and Jan Åke Hillerud [sv],[19] among others.

[20] Source[21] The pairing of the hymn text with the Veni Emmanuel tune was proved an extremely significant combination.

The book "probably did more than anything else to spread the ideas of the Oxford Movement" (which include the aesthetics of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel") "so widely that many of them became imperceptibly a part of the tradition of the Church as a whole."

It is very reflective of these cultural forces that the form of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" in Hymns Ancient and Modern remains predominant in the English-speaking world.

Among several German paraphrases of the hymn, one is attributed to Christoph Bernhard Verspoell – one of the earliest and most influential to arise around the late-18th/early-19th century.

[25] A more faithful German translation by Heinrich Bone became the vehicle for a tune from JBC Schmidts' Sammlung von Kirchengesängen für katholische Gymnasien (Düsseldorf 1836), which remains popular in German diocesan song-books and regional editions of the common hymnal Gotteslob.

This melody was carried across the Atlantic by Johann Baptist Singenberger, where it remains in use through the present in some Catholic communities in the United States.

The Archdiocese of Cologne's supplement to Gotteslob (#829) includes a tune by CF Ackens (Aachen, 1841) with the Bone translation.

A version by Bone without a refrain is commonly connected with a tune from the Andernacher Gesangbuch (Cologne, 1608), but it can also be used with the melody of the medieval Latin hymn Conditor alme siderum, further demonstrating the flexibility of metrical hymnody.