Heal us, Immanuel, hear our prayer

Heal us, Immanuel, hear our prayer. William Cowper* (1731-1800). First printed in Olney Hymns (1779), with the title ’Jehovah-Rophi, I am the Lord that healeth thee. Chap. xv.’ [of Exodus]. ‘Jehovah-Rophi’ means ‘The God who heals me’, but Cowper gives the Hebrew a New Testament significance by using the word ‘Emmanuel’ and referring to the stories in Mark 5 and Mark 9. The hymn had six stanzas. Cowper’s first line was ‘Heal us, Emmanuel, here we are’. The alteration to ‘hear our prayer’ appeared in The Salisbury Hymn Book (1857), edited by Horatio Bolton Nelson*, and in many subsequent books. Some books retain the original, or prefer ‘here we stand’ or ‘we are here’; a few American...