E Toru Ngā Mea lyrics, meaning and Bible verse

The E Toru Ngā Mea lyrics are eight short lines in te reo Māori that sing a single verse of the Bible: E toru ngā mea ‘there are three things’, hope, faith and, greatest of all, ko te aroha ‘love’. The verse is 1 Corinthians 13:13, which the Douay-Rheims Bible gives as “And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.” This guide prints the words, translates them line by line and word by word from Te Aka Māori Dictionary, sets them beside the same verse in the Māori Bible of 1868, and shows how to say them. No source names a composer: it is sung as a traditional hymn.

Updated 22 October 2026 · 7 min read

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E Toru Ngā Mea lyrics

These are the words exactly as NZ Folk Song prints them, without the guitar chords. Like most song sheets, it marks only one long vowel:

E toru nga mea
Nga mea nunui
E kī ana
Te Paipera
Tumanako
Whakapono
Ko te mea nui
Ko te aroha.

That is the whole song: NZ Folk Song prints no second verse. Other printings differ slightly, in the second line and in the order of hope and faith; the differences are set out below.

What E Toru Ngā Mea means, line by line

The middle column spells each line as Te Aka Māori Dictionary spells its words today, with the long vowels marked. The right column is a literal translation built only from Te Aka’s meanings.

As sung	Spelt as Te Aka spells it	Literally
E toru nga mea	E toru ngā mea	There are three things
Nga mea nunui	Ngā mea nunui	Great, important things
E kī ana / Te Paipera	E kī ana te Paipera	The Bible says
Tumanako	Tūmanako	Hope
Whakapono	Whakapono	Faith
Ko te mea nui	Ko te mea nui	The great thing
Ko te aroha.	Ko te aroha	Is love.

Put back into ordinary English: There are three great things, the Bible says: hope, faith, and the greatest thing is love.

Word by word

Word	Te Aka’s meaning
e	a particle used when stating numbers of things, as in e toru ‘three’; also used with a verb and ana to show action in progress, as in e kī ana ‘is saying’
toru	three, 3
ngā	the (plural of te)
mea	thing, object; as a verb, to say, do, think
nunui	large, big; mainly used as the plural form of nui; also to be important, major
kī	to say, speak, express, utter, mention, tell
ana	used following e and a verb to indicate continuing action or a continuing state
Paipera	Bible: a loanword
tūmanako	hope, desire, wish; as a verb, to hope for, wish for
whakapono	faith, creed, belief; as a verb, to believe, trust
ko	a particle with no English equivalent, used when talking about something specific
nui	large, big, great, important, of high rank
aroha	affection, sympathy, charity, compassion, love, empathy

Te Aka’s list for aroha includes charity, and that is why some song sheets translate the last line as charity rather than love: it is the word the Douay-Rheims uses in this verse. Nunui is the plural of nui, so the second line describes all three things as great; the seventh line, back in the singular, singles out the one that is greatest.

Where the printed versions differ

The song is learnt by ear, so printings vary in small ways. Nothing in them changes the meaning.

Line	NZ Folk Song	Te Papapa School	AANZPA
2	Nga mea nunui	Ngā mea nui	Ngā mea nunui
3–4	E kī ana / Te Paipera	E kī ana / Te Paipera	E kī ana te paipera, as one line
5–6	Tumanako / Whakapono	Tūmanako / Whakapono	Whakapono / Tumanako

Two of the three sing hope before faith, the reverse of the Bible’s order; the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Psychodrama Association (AANZPA) prints faith first, as the verse has it. The Ministry of Education also publishes the song for schools, with a recording and a song sheet, on its Tāhūrangi site.

The Bible verse behind E Toru Ngā Mea

The song is 1 Corinthians 13:13, the last verse of Saint Paul’s chapter on charity. This is the verse as the Māori Bible, Ko te Paipera Tapu, printed it in London in 1868:

13 Na, tenei te mau nei te whakapono, te tumanako, te aroha, enei e toru; te mea nui rawa ia o enei ko te aroha.

And in the Douay-Rheims, the traditional Catholic English Bible:

And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.

Sources of the verse. Ko te Paipera Tapu, ara, ko te Kawenata Tawhito me te Kawenata Hou (Rānana [London]: W. M. Watts, for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1868), 1 Koriniti 13:13, read from the scan at the Internet Archive, public domain. The English is from the Douay-Rheims Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, at drbo.org.

Spelt with Te Aka’s macrons, and taken phrase by phrase:

1868, re-spelt	Te Aka’s meanings	Douay-Rheims
Nā, tēnei	nā: now, now then, to call attention; tēnei: this, here	And now
te mau nei	mau: to be fixed, firm, continuing, lasting, retained	there remain
te whakapono, te tūmanako, te aroha	faith, hope, love	faith, hope, and charity
ēnei e toru	ēnei: these; e toru: three	these three:
te mea nui rawa ia o ēnei	the very greatest thing of these: rawa means very, exceedingly; ia here is the particle for but, on the other hand	but the greatest of these
ko te aroha	is love	is charity.

Set side by side, the song is a short retelling of the verse. It keeps the three words exactly, whakapono, tūmanako and aroha, and the closing ko te aroha. It adds e kī ana te Paipera ‘the Bible says’ to name where the teaching comes from. And where the Bible has te mea nui rawa ‘the very greatest thing’, the song drops rawa and sings ko te mea nui ‘the great thing’, which still makes love the one that matters most.

Who wrote E Toru Ngā Mea?

Nobody is recorded. NZ Folk Song, which lists Māori songs by their writers, gives neither a writer nor a year for it, and calls it a communal hymn. Hymnary.org, the hymn database, gives the source of both the words and the tune only as Māori, Aotearoa New Zealand, and records both as public domain. Te Papapa School’s waiata site titles its recording a traditional Māori waiata.

It has travelled beyond New Zealand. Hymnary lists it in two international hymnals, Global Praise 2 (2000) and Agape: songs of hope and reconciliation (2003), under the subjects acclamation and holy scripture, and notes English versions by Fred Kaan (“Of all things that are”) and S. T. Kimbrough (“Believe in God’s Word”), and a German one by Dietrich Werner (“Nun aber bleiben”).

When it is sung

To begin shared work. NZ Folk Song describes it as a simple hymn sung when beginning a communal project.
In church. It is a hymn, and Hymnary files it under acclamation and holy scripture in the two hymnals above.
At school. The Ministry of Education publishes it in Hei Waiata, Hei Whakakoakoa, its collection of waiata for teaching te reo Māori in English-medium schools, with an audio recording, a song sheet and teaching suggestions, and says the audio, lyrics and song sheet may be copied for classroom use. Te Papapa School lists it first in its waiata song bank.

For the other songs New Zealanders sing together, from Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi to Whakaaria Mai, see Māori songs everyone knows.

How to say E Toru Ngā Mea

Every letter keeps its sound, so the song can be sung as it is written. The full set of sounds is in the Māori pronunciation guide; these are the ones this song needs, as Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington describes them:

The vowels. Short a as in aloud, e as in entry, i as in eat, o as in ordinary, u as in to. So e toru is e to-ru, never ee toe-roo.
Long vowels. The ā of ngā is the a of car; the ū of tūmanako is the u of loot; the ī of kī is the i of peep. Hold them.
ng, in ngā: one sound, as in singer.
wh, in whakapono: in most dialects today close to an English f.
r, in toru, Paipera and aroha: a soft rolled r.
t: before a, e or o, as in toru and te, with as little hiss as possible, almost like a d; before u, as in tūmanako, a slight hiss.
Every vowel is said. mea is me-a, two syllables; Paipera is pai-pe-ra; nunui is nu-nu-i.

Going further

For a prayer taken word by word in the same way, see the Lord’s Prayer in Māori. Since 1 Corinthians 13 is about love, the words for a wedding day are in Māori wedding words. And every word in this song, from toru to aroha, is everyday Māori: numbers, mea, nui and the particles ko and e … ana all come early in our own free te reo Māori course.