Sorry, but it's the Orange brick... (cont'd)

A small matter, this, but since it cropped up yesterday in the same service as Pange lingua and Brightest and best it's worth mentioning.

OB 724

John Henry Hopkins (Jr - please don't confuse him with his dad) wrote We three kings of Orient are towards the end of the 19thC, when England still had an Empire and the CofE and Queen Victoria, and its only virtue (apart from an inexplicable popularity) is that it gives three different choir chaps a once-in-a-year opportunity to sing a solo.  But it's harmless stuff, and hardly worth, you might think, the attention of the text editors of the Orange Brick.  But they evidently don't think they're earning their keep unless they meddle with somebody else's words, and here they are, at it again.

The last verse of this jolly bit of nonsense runs, as you will remember:

Glorious now behold him arise,

King and God and sacrifice;

Heaven sings "alleluia",

"Alleluia" the earth replies.

I can't for the life of me see why the earnest editors of the Orange Brick felt it necessary to change the last two lines, not quite logically, to:

Alleluia, alleluia,

earth to heav'n [sic] replies.

Unless, of course, it is to claim copyright for the next 75 years and watch the boodle rolling in.

Which has given me another idea...