Psalm 91:1-4 vs. “On Eagle's Wings”

Michael Joncas · checked 2026-07-25

What we checked

PassagePsalm 91:1-4 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asparaphrase

Categoryverse-splicing · context dropped

AlbumOCP (Oregon Catholic Press) · 1979

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✗Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

The verses follow Psalm 91 closely, keeping the shelter, the fowler's snare, the wings, and the angels
The imported image is itself scriptural: Exodus 19:4 really does say God bore His people on eagles' wings
It is not presented as a scripture reading, and hymnology scholarship cited on Wikipedia (Grindal, 1994) calls the text a close paraphrase of the psalm with free versification
The psalm's comfort is preserved. Nothing said about God here is untrue of Him

⚠ Cautions

The refrain, the part that gets memorised, is not Psalm 91. The eagle comes from Exodus 19:4
The refrain's source is God's own first-person speech at Sinai, retold here in the third person. The words moved books and changed speakers on the way, and neither move is audible in the pew
Hymnals and congregations file this under Psalm 91, so the splice is invisible to the person singing it
The publisher files it there too. OCP's collection page calls it "the most popular rendition of Psalm 91 ever written", which covers the refrain as well as the verses
No translation is named, which is expected for a free paraphrase but means there is nothing to check the wording against

Verse Proof

Psalm 91:1-4

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “You are my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Surely He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly plague. He will cover you with His feathers; under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and rampart.”

A psalm of refuge. The speaker declares the LORD his shelter, then turns and addresses the hearer directly with what God will do for the one who trusts Him: deliver from the fowler's snare, cover with His feathers, shield. God Himself does speak in this psalm, but not until the last three verses, where He answers in the first person (vv.14-16).

What the song says, described not quoted

The verses follow Psalm 91 closely: dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, naming the LORD as refuge and fortress, rescue from the snare of the fowler, shelter under God's wings, the assurance that no evil will come and that angels are charged to guard. The refrain, which is the part everyone knows, is different. It promises the hearer that God will lift and carry and shelter them, in imagery drawn from Exodus 19:4 rather than from this psalm. It speaks about God, in the third person, to the one being comforted.

Two things move in the refrain. The eagle is not from Psalm 91: this psalm's shelter is feathers and wings without naming a bird, and the eagle carrying a people belongs to Exodus 19:4, where God tells Israel at Sinai that He bore them on eagles' wings out of Egypt. And the voice changes in the borrowing, in a direction easy to miss: Exodus 19:4 is God speaking about Himself in the first person, and the refrain retells that promise about Him in the third person. So the line moved books and changed speakers on the way.

✎ Departs from the text: The verses track Psalm 91 closely. But the refrain is not in Psalm 91. Its central image comes from Exodus 19:4, God's own first-person words at Sinai, retold here about Him and addressed to the hearer.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Two true things joined at the seam make a third thing, and the third thing is not the passage.

Why it matters

This is the gentlest possible example of the most common thing that happens to a psalm in song, which is why it is here rather than a song nobody sings. The hymn was written in 1976 for a funeral, published by Oregon Catholic Press in 1979, and has since become widely sung at funerals in both Catholic and Protestant worship. When a hymn carries a psalm that far, most people's Psalm 91 becomes the hymn's Psalm 91.

Nothing here is false. Exodus 19:4 really does say God carried His people on eagles' wings, and Psalm 91 really does promise shelter. But two true things joined at the seam make a third thing, and the third thing is not the passage. A singer who has only the hymn will look for eagles in Psalm 91 and not find them, and will carry out of it, as the psalm's own promise, a line whose image belongs to a different book.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is the refrain, because that is how refrains work, and the refrain is the part that is not the psalm. That is worth saying plainly and without alarm: the thing you will carry out of this hymn is a promise about God, drawn from His own words in Exodus, about being lifted and held. It is a true thing about God. It just is not what Psalm 91:1-4 says, and if this hymn is your Psalm 91, your Psalm 91 has an eagle in it. The fix is small and it is not to stop singing. Read the psalm once, whole, including the ending where God actually does speak. Then the refrain becomes what it is, a good hymn about a real God, rather than a verse you think you know.

Helpful comparison

The voice question is worth being precise about, because both texts in play handle it deliberately. Psalm 91 does contain God's own first-person speech, but saves it for the end: "Because he loves Me, I will deliver him; because he knows My name, I will protect him… With long life I will satisfy him and show him My salvation" (Psalm 91:14-16, BSB). Exodus 19:4 is first-person divine speech too: God Himself says He bore Israel on eagles' wings. The refrain takes that first-person promise and retells it in the third person, spoken about God to the hearer. So the hymn does not put words in God's mouth; it takes words out of His mouth and reports them. Nothing false enters, but a singer who goes looking for the refrain's promise will find it spoken by God about a rescue already accomplished, in a different book, at a mountain.

⚠ Watch out

Worth knowing if you use it pastorally, which is mostly how it is used. Psalm 91's promises are famously easy to over-apply. Satan quotes verses 11 and 12 of this very psalm at Jesus in the wilderness, and Jesus refuses the reading (Matthew 4:5-7). A funeral congregation singing this promise of rescue is not doing anything wrong, but the psalm's own guard rails are worth keeping: it is a psalm of refuge in God, not a guarantee against harm, and its comfort is that He is with the one who trusts Him in trouble.

Sources

Wikipedia — On Eagle's Wings · (composed 1976 for a funeral, published by OCP 1979; "based on the text of Psalm 91" with "references to Exodus 19 and Matthew 13"; describes it as a close paraphrase with free versification, and notes the psalm itself has no eagle imagery)
OCP — On Eagle's Wings collection · (the publisher's own page; describes the collection as psalm settings and the song as "the most popular rendition of Psalm 91 ever written")
Hymnary.org — On Eagle's Wings (tune) · (hymnal usage and text listings)
Hymnary.org — On Eagle's Wings (text authority) · (catalog entry across 47 hymnals, copyright 1979 OCP Publications; the catalogued refrain first line speaks about God in the third person, and the scripture index for the text lists Exodus 19 alongside Psalm 91)
YouTube — the embedded upload · (YouTube's oEmbed returns author_name "OCPmusic", the publisher's own channel, and the title "On Eagle's Wings - Michael Joncas | 50th Anniversary Lyric Video"; checked 2026-08-07)

Corrections

2026-08-02 This proof originally said the refrain speaks as God in the first person. It does not. The refrain speaks about God to the hearer, in the third person, as Hymnary's catalogued refrain first line across 47 hymnals shows. The true voice-change runs the other way: the refrain's source, Exodus 19:4, is God's own first-person speech, which the hymn retells in the third person. The splice finding, the category, and the verdict tier rest on the borrowed image and are unchanged.
2026-08-07 The 2026-08-02 pass missed two sentences, and they stayed on the page contradicting the correction above. Why-it-matters said a singer would remember God saying the refrain's promise, and warnings called it a first-person divine promise of rescue. Both now read the refrain as third-person speech about God. Two source claims were also corrected. Good previously said the publisher presents the song as a paraphrase; OCP's own page does not use that word, it calls the song a rendition of Psalm 91 within a collection of psalm settings, so the paraphrase description is now attributed to the hymnology scholarship that actually makes it, and the publisher's own framing has been added to cautions. The Hymnary source note previously said the refrain's scripture is indexed to Exodus 19; Hymnary indexes scripture for the text as a whole without breaking the refrain out, and the note now says that.
2026-08-07 A second note on the same day's pass, appended rather than folded into the line above, because a correction here is only ever added to. That pass also did things its own note does not list. It replaced a claim about the hymn's reach: why-it-matters had called the song one of the most-sung comfort texts in English-language worship, a superlative nothing cited supported, and it now says the hymn became widely sung at funerals in Catholic and Protestant worship, which the cited Wikipedia article supports. It removed quoted song wording from the entry, including from the 2026-08-02 line above and from the Hymnary source note, under the rule that this site does not reproduce lyrics. Removing it meant editing a published correction in place, which should not have happened, and that same edit dropped the 2026-08-02 line's closing claim that every sentence carrying the first-person error had been rewritten. The note above is the record that the claim was false. The finding, the category, and the tier did not move.

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