Scripture Verse

This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Jordan Valley, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Ezekiel 47:8–9

Introduction

portrait
Philip Doddridge (1702–1751)

Words: Phi­lip Dodd­ridge (1702–1751). Pub­lished post­hu­mous­ly in Hymns Found­ed on Va­ri­ous Texts in the Ho­ly Scrip­tures, by Job Or­ton (Shrop­shire, Eng­land: Jo­shua Ed­dowes & John Cot­ton, 1755), num­ber 147: The Wa­ters of the Sanc­tu­ary heal­ing the dead Sea‡…‡The Sea or Lake, where So­dom and Go­mor­rah, &c. had stood, which was pu­trid and poi­son­ous, and an­cient writ­ers say, that no fish could live in it.

Music: March­field Ed­ward A. Coll­ier, in The Psal­ter (Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­van­ia: Unit­ed Pres­by­ter­ian Board of Pub­li­ca­tion, 1912), num­ber 330 (🔊 pdf nwc).

Lyrics

Great source of be­ing and of love,
Thou wa­ter­est all the worlds above,
And all the joys we mor­tals know
From Thine ex­haust­less fount­ain flow.

A sac­red spring at Thy com­mand
From Zio­n’s mount, in Ca­naan’s land,
Beside Thy tem­ple, cleaves the ground,
And pours its lim­pid stream around.

The lim­pid stream with sud­den force
Swells to a ri­ver in its course;
Through de­sert realms its wind­ings play,
And scat­ter bless­ings all the way.

Close by its banks in or­der fair
The bloom­ing trees of life ap­pear;
Their blos­soms frag­rant od­ors give,
And on their fruit the na­tions live.

To the dead sea the wa­ters flow,
And car­ry heal­ing as they go;
Its poi­son­ous dregs their pow­er con­fess,
And all its shores the fount­ain bless.

Flow, won­drous stream with glo­ry crowned,
Flow on to earth’s re­mot­est bound;
And bear us on thy gen­tle wave
To Him, who all thy vir­tues gave.

illustration
The Dead Sea
David Shankbone