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You’ve probably sung it at a funeral. Maybe you’ve heard it hummed quietly in a hospital waiting room, or watched someone mouth the words at a graveside with their hand pressed flat against their chest. “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way… when sorrows like sea billows roll… it is well, it is well, with my soul.” It’s one of those hymns that shows up exactly when nothing feels well at all — which is usually the whole point of singing it.
It turns out this hymn belongs to a pattern bigger than itself. Plenty of the lines people quote as pure inspiration — phrases people assume came from a poet or a mug at Hobby Lobby — actually trace straight back to Scripture, with the reference quietly dropped somewhere along the way. This one has the same kind of hidden history. Except this time, the person who said it first wasn’t reciting a proverb. She was standing in the middle of the worst day of her life.
Most people who sing it assume it’s a song about acceptance. About finally getting to the other side of grief and being able to say, at last, that things turned out okay. But that’s not actually where the line comes from — not in the hymn’s own history, and not in the story buried underneath it. The phrase “it is well” shows up in the Bible almost three thousand years before Horatio Spafford ever picked up a pen, and it was spoken by a woman whose son was lying dead in a room behind her while she said it.
The Hymn Was Written Over the Water Where His Daughters Died
Horatio Spafford wasn’t a professional songwriter. He was a Chicago attorney and a friend of the evangelist D.L. Moody, a man who’d already absorbed one blow after another by the time this hymn was written in 1873. Two years earlier, the Great Chicago Fire had wiped out most of his real estate investments. Before that, he and his wife Anna had buried their young son.
Then came the crossing. The Spaffords planned a family trip to Europe, but a last-minute business delay kept Horatio in Chicago, so he sent Anna and their four daughters ahead on the steamship Ville du Havre. Partway across the Atlantic, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and went down in twelve minutes. Anna survived, pulled from the wreckage unconscious. All four daughters drowned. When she reached land in Wales, she sent her husband a two-word telegram: “Saved alone.”
Horatio boarded a ship to go meet her. Somewhere on that crossing, the captain reportedly called him to the deck and told him they were passing near the spot where the Ville du Havre had gone down — where his daughters had died. It’s in that exact location, over that exact water, that the words of the hymn are said to have come to him. Not after the grief resolved. While he was still sailing directly over the place his children were lost.
A Mother in 2 Kings 4 Said It First — And She Wasn’t Being Poetic
Long before Spafford, in a farming town called Shunem, there was a woman the Bible never even names. Scripture calls her “a great woman” — meaning wealthy, established, respected in her community. She noticed that the prophet Elisha passed through Shunem regularly on his travels, and without being asked, she built him a small room on her roof: a bed, a table, a chair, a lamp. A place to rest whenever he came through.
Elisha wanted to repay her kindness. Through his servant Gehazi, he learned she had no children, and her husband was old. So Elisha told her that by that time the following year, she would be holding a son of her own. It happened exactly as he said.
The boy grew. And then, one day out in the fields with his father during harvest, he grabbed his head and cried out in pain. He was carried home, sat on his mother’s lap, and by noon he was dead.
Here’s where the story stops behaving the way grief usually behaves. She didn’t wail. She didn’t call for her husband to come and see. She carried her son’s body up to Elisha’s room, laid him on the prophet’s own bed, shut the door, and asked her husband to saddle a donkey so she could ride to find Elisha — immediately, without explanation. When her husband asked why she’d go on a day that wasn’t a festival or Sabbath, she gave him only three words: “It shall be well” (2 Kings 4:23).
She rode hard toward Mount Carmel. Elisha saw her coming from a distance and sent his servant Gehazi to run and meet her with a question — the same question, really, that everyone eventually asks the person in the middle of a crisis: Is everything okay? “Run now, I pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well” (2 Kings 4:26, KJV).
Read that again slowly. Her son’s body was cold on a bed in another town. She had told no one the full truth yet — not even the man riding beside her. And still, the words that came out of her mouth were: it is well.
Where the Turn Actually Is
It’s tempting to read her answer as denial — a mother too shattered to say the truth out loud. But that’s not what the rest of the chapter shows. The moment she actually reached Elisha, she fell at his feet and told him everything, in raw and unguarded language: essentially, “Did I ask you for a son? Didn’t I tell you not to deceive me?” She wasn’t hiding her grief. She was choosing, deliberately, what she would say on the road before she got there.
That’s the detail almost nobody notices about this story, and it’s the same detail hiding inside Spafford’s hymn a few thousand years later: “it is well” was never a report on how things currently looked. It was a declaration made before the miracle — not a summary written after it. The Shunammite woman said it while her son was dead. Spafford wrote it while sailing over his daughters’ grave in the ocean. Neither one of them was describing their circumstances. They were describing what they still believed about God in spite of their circumstances.
That’s the whole hinge of the phrase, and it’s why the hymn keeps getting sung at the exact moments when nothing is objectively “well” yet. It was never meant to be spoken from the other side of the pain. It was built to be spoken from the middle of it — which is exactly where you might be standing right now.
What This Actually Changes About Your Life This Week
If you’ve been waiting for a situation to resolve before you feel allowed to say “it is well” — a diagnosis, a marriage, a job, a wayward kid, a bank account — this story flips that order. The Shunammite woman’s “it is well” wasn’t the result of good news. It was the thing she said on the way to the good news, while she still had no idea if it was coming.
You don’t need the resolution in hand to say those words honestly. You need only what she had: a settled trust in who God is, spoken out loud before you can see how the story ends. That’s not positive thinking. It’s not denial, either. It’s a declaration — the same kind Job made when he said he’d trust God even if he was slain, and the same kind that runs through the whole of Elisha’s ministry, which is full of ordinary people trusting a promise before they ever saw it fulfilled.
Here’s the actual, doable version of that this week: pick the one situation you’re currently unwilling to call “well” — the one still unresolved on your calendar or in your chest — and say the words about it anyway, out loud, today. Not “it’s fine.” Not “it’ll work out.” The specific phrase: “It is well.” Said as a statement about God’s character, not a prediction about the outcome.
Three Things You Can Do in the Next Ten Minutes
- Name it and say it. Think of the one thing in your life right now that isn’t resolved — health, a relationship, money, a decision you’re waiting on. Say “it is well” about that exact thing, out loud, right where you are. Not because it’s fixed. Because you trust who’s holding it.
- Write it down where you’ll see it again. Put “it is well” — with the specific situation named next to it — somewhere you’ll actually look today: a sticky note, your phone’s lock screen, the notes app. Not as a wish. As a declaration you’re keeping in front of yourself before the story is finished.
- Send it to someone else, mid-crisis. Think of one person you know who’s currently in the middle of something hard — not past it, not celebrating a resolution yet. Text them: “I’m not waiting for the ending to believe with you. It is well.” Send it before you second-guess it.
Questions to Sit With
What is the one situation in my life right now where I’ve been waiting for things to look better before I’ll say “it is well”?
When have I said something was “fine” just to protect someone else’s feelings, versus said it as an actual declaration of faith?
If I really believed God’s character more than I believe my circumstances today, what would I say differently about the hardest thing I’m facing?
A Prayer for the Middle of the Story
God, I don’t have the ending yet, and I’m tired of waiting for it before I trust You. There’s a specific thing weighing on me right now that isn’t resolved — You know exactly what it is even when I can’t find the words for it. Help me say “it is well” today not because everything looks fixed, but because I actually believe You’re good in the middle of this. Give me the same steady faith that woman had on the road to Carmel, before she knew how her story would end. Amen.
Discussion Question
Do you think it’s harder to say “it is well” before the miracle, or after it’s already happened? Tell us in the comments.
Share This
- I always thought “it is well with my soul” was about finally being at peace after grief. Turns out the Bible verse behind it was spoken by a mother whose son was still dead when she said it. That changes everything about how I sing that hymn now.
- Spafford wrote “it is well with my soul” while sailing over the exact water where his four daughters had just drowned. Not after the grief. During it. Wow.
- “It is well” isn’t a report that things are fine. It’s a declaration you make before you know how the story ends — 2 Kings 4:26, and it wrecked me a little today.
Questions People Ask
Is “It Is Well With My Soul” based on a Bible verse?
The hymn’s most famous line echoes 2 Kings 4:26, where a grieving mother in the Bible answers “Is it well with thee?” by saying simply, “It is well” — while her son had already died. The hymn itself was written by Horatio Spafford in 1873.
What does “it is well” mean in 2 Kings 4:26?
It’s the answer the Shunammite woman gives when Elisha’s servant asks if she, her husband, and her child are okay — spoken while her son’s body was lying on a bed in another town. It’s a declaration of trust in God, not a report that the crisis was already over.
Who was the Shunammite woman in the Bible?
She’s an unnamed but wealthy woman from the town of Shunem who built a room for the prophet Elisha on her roof. He promised her a son, she had one, and years later that son died and was raised back to life through Elisha’s prayers in 2 Kings 4.
Did Horatio Spafford know about the 2 Kings 4 story when he wrote the hymn?
There’s no direct historical record confirming he was consciously quoting 2 Kings 4, but the phrase and the posture — declaring “it is well” in the middle of unresolved loss, not after — mirror the biblical account closely enough that many readers see it as more than coincidence.
What happened to the Shunammite woman’s son?
He was suddenly gripped by severe head pain while working in the fields. His mother carried his body to Elisha’s room, rode to find the prophet, and Elisha returned with her and prayed over the boy until he came back to life — one of several resurrection accounts in the Bible, alongside stories like Tabitha’s in the book of Acts.
