Lyrics
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land;
Oh, who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene
That rises to my sight!
Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight!
O'er all those wide, extended plains
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.
No chilling winds or poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
When I shall reach that happy place,
I'll be forever blest,
For I shall see my Father's face,
And in His bosom rest.
Filled with delight my raptured soul
Would here no longer stay;
Though Jordan's waves around me roll,
Fearless, I'd launch away.
Public domain hymn text (published 1787), based on Philippians 1:21 and Revelation 21:23.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Samuel Stennett wrote "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" in 1787, and it first appeared that year in John Rippon's hymn collection under the heading "Heaven Anticipated," running to eight original stanzas. Stennett, an English Baptist minister born in 1727 into a long line of ministers, succeeded his own father as pastor upon his death in 1758. Despite his Nonconformist standing outside the established Church of England, Stennett was personally acquainted with King George III and was honored with a doctor of divinity degree from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1763.
The hymn takes its central image from Israel's position at the edge of the Jordan River in the book of Joshua, poised to cross into the promised land of Canaan after forty years of wilderness wandering. Stennett turns that historical moment into an extended metaphor for the Christian's own anticipation of Heaven — a "fair and happy land" visible but not yet reached, standing on the near bank and looking across.
The hymn found its greatest popularity not in England but among nineteenth-century American Methodists, sung widely at camp meetings and outdoor revival gatherings known as brush arbors, and it entered the American shape-note singing tradition through its inclusion in the 1835 collection Southern Harmony. Its familiar refrain, "I am bound for the promised land," was not part of Stennett's original text at all — it was added later, likely by the hymnal editor and composer Rigdon M. McIntosh, working from an earlier folk-tune tradition.
That added refrain, simple enough to be picked up instantly by an entire camp-meeting crowd, is largely responsible for the hymn's lasting popularity in American gospel singing, even though it came from a different hand entirely than Stennett's original eight stanzas.
