Lyrics
Bring the King Back
These words are here to be learned and sung. Play the recording above and follow the highlighted line, or simply use the lyrics as a hymn text.
Verse
The water ran black and the countryside wept,
And the king went across and never looked back —
Six hundred behind him was all that he kept,
Just a barefoot road and a city gone slack.
He covered his head and he climbed through his tears
To the hill where the olive trees stand,
And the crown he had carried for twenty hard years
He laid it wide open in God’s own hand.
Chorus
So bring the king back, bring the king back —
Why are you last at the ford?
He stole all your hearts, and he’s dead in a pit,
But the kingdom belongs to the Lord.
Come to the water where the sentence is mercy —
Bring the king back over Jordan.
Verse
Bread on the table and a friend in the chair,
A guide and an equal, a voice like a psalm;
He counted the odds, left the king standing bare,
Walked out alone with a rope in his palm.
A thousand years on there was bread again,
A sop and a kiss and a garden at night —
Same heel, same table, same hunger in men,
Same silver, same rope, same borrowed light.
Chorus
So bring the king back, bring the king back —
Why are you last at the ford?
He stole all your hearts, and he’s dead in a pit,
But the kingdom belongs to the Lord.
Come to the water where the sentence is mercy —
Bring the king back over Jordan.
Verse
He was fair as the morning from heel to hair,
No blemish upon him, and all the land knew;
He stood in the gate with a grievance to share —
“No man here will hear you. But I hear you.”
He kissed every hand and he stole every heart,
Came in his own name, and they let him inside;
He spread out his tent where the daylight starts
And made a whole kingdom a witness to pride.
Bridge
The wood took more than the sword took down,
And the mule walked out from under his pride;
His glory reached up and held him bound
Between the heaven and earth, hung wide.
Then the King in the chamber above the gate
Broke for the boy who had wanted him dead —
“Would God I had died for thee.” Too late.
A thousand years on, He died instead.
Verse
So let them take the acres, let them take the gold —
I’ll not trim my beard till my King is crowned;
And follow Him out where the ashes are cold,
Out past the gate with the strangers He found.
In death or in life, wherever He stands,
That’s where I’ll stand when the trumpet is blown —
He made me a way with His own two hands
And He’ll never cast out what He calls His own.
Chorus
So bring the king back, bring the king back —
Why are you last at the ford?
He stole all your hearts, and he’s dead in a pit,
But the kingdom belongs to the Lord.
Come to the water where the sentence is mercy —
Bring the king back over Jordan.
Music and lyrics: Public Domain / CC0 1.0 Universal · Sound recording: Public Domain / CC0 1.0 Universal.