2 Kings 4:23-26 vs. “It Is Well With My Soul”

Audrey Assad · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

Passage2 Kings 4:23-26 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumInheritance · 2016

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceexperience (the singer’s story)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

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

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting, anywhere: no verse reference, no translation named, nothing framed as scripture
Its third stanza's content, sin nailed to the cross and no longer carried, tracks Colossians 2:14, which is the reference hymnal indexes assign to it most consistently
The history behind it is genuinely documented, including contemporary newspaper accounts of the collision and the surviving telegram
The recording checked here sings Spafford's stanzas as written and adds no modern bridge or chorus, so what is sung is the historic text

⚠ Cautions

The refrain's phrase matches 2 Kings 4:26 in the King James and World English wording and is widely repeated as coming from there, but no documented account of the hymn's origin connects them
In the passage that answer is given twice by a woman who has told nobody her son is dead, and one verse later the prophet says her soul is in deep distress. It is not a statement of settled peace
The best-known version of the backstory, that Spafford wrote the words as his ship passed the wreck site, is one of three surviving first-hand accounts, and the other two place it elsewhere
The Berean Standard Bible renders the Shunammite's answer "Everything is all right," so the resemblance depends entirely on which translation a listener grew up with

Verse Proof

2 Kings 4:23-26

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Why would you go to him today?” he replied. “It is not a New Moon or a Sabbath.” “Everything is all right,” she said. Then she saddled the donkey and told her servant, “Drive onward; do not slow the pace for me unless I tell you.” So she set out and went to the man of God at Mount Carmel. When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to his servant Gehazi, “Look, there is the Shunammite woman. Please run out now to meet her and ask, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?’” And she answered, “Everything is all right.”

Elisha had promised a son to a wealthy woman of Shunem who kept a room for him, and the boy was born. Years later the child complained of his head out in the harvest field, was carried in to his mother, sat on her lap until noon, and died. She laid him on the prophet's bed, shut the door, and asked her husband for a servant and a donkey. Verses 23 to 26 are what she says on the way. Her husband asks why she would go to the prophet on a day that is neither New Moon nor Sabbath, and she answers that everything is all right. She tells the servant to keep the pace up. When Elisha sees her coming and sends Gehazi to ask after her husband and her child, she gives the same answer a second time. She has told nobody the boy is dead. One verse later she reaches Elisha, takes hold of his feet, and the prophet says her soul is in deep distress.

What the song says, described not quoted

The hymn is a first-person confession of trust. The words are Horatio Spafford's, a Chicago lawyer whose four daughters drowned when the Ville du Havre sank in 1873, and the tune is Philip Bliss's, named after the ship. The first stanza sets peace and sorrow side by side and says the singer's soul is well under either one. The second names trouble and rests on the assurance that Christ has taken care of the singer's helpless condition. The third is about sin nailed to the cross and no longer carried. A refrain repeating the title phrase follows each stanza. Audrey Assad's recording sings three of Spafford's stanzas in order with the refrain after each and adds no modern material. No verse is cited anywhere in the hymn and no translation is named.

The link between this hymn and 2 Kings 4 is a wording resemblance and nothing more. The King James and the World English Bible both render the Shunammite's answer as "It is well," which is the hymn's title phrase and the first line of its refrain. That resemblance gets repeated as fact. The Vineyard Churches UK article on the hymn states flatly that Spafford's words come from 2 Kings 4:26 and echo the Shunammite woman, and gives no source for it. No documented account of the hymn's origin names the verse, and the reference works that index the text line by line assign other passages entirely. Even granting the borrowing, the two phrases do different jobs. Hers is what a mother says twice to people who cannot raise her son, on her way to the one she believes can. The hymn's is a settled confession made to God about the singer's own soul.

· Not a quote: The hymn cites no verse and never says it is quoting. Its refrain matches the King James wording of 2 Kings 4:26. But no documented account of the hymn's origin connects the two.

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

What makes this refrain feel like scripture is a story, not a citation.

Why it matters

Almost nobody meets this hymn without the story attached. The shipwreck itself is well documented, down to the collision, the twelve minutes, and a telegram from Anna Spafford preserved at the Library of Congress. The part that gets told hardest is the part that is not settled: three first-hand accounts of when Spafford wrote the words survive, they contradict each other, and the manuscript is undated. That matters here because the hymn does not say it is scripture at all, so whatever weight it carries in a room is coming from its history rather than from a reference, and a history deserves the same checking a verse gets.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

The dwelling tag is mixed because the words are mostly about the singer's own soul while the ground they stand on sits outside the singer. That is the hymn's shape: a statement about my condition, resting on the cross rather than on how the day is going. Sung on repeat it plants a sentence a person can say when the feeling behind it has gone, which is why it is reached for at funerals and in hospital rooms. Worth noticing is what it does not plant. It leaves no verse to look up and no reference to carry away, so what stays is the confession and the story behind it. If you want the confession anchored to a text, read Colossians 2:14 next to the third stanza, which is where the hymnals have long pointed.

Helpful comparison

Three things are checkable, and they point the same direction.

First, the wording. The King James and the World English Bible both render the Shunammite's answer "It is well." The Berean Standard Bible renders it "Everything is all right." The resemblance a reader hears belongs to one family of English translations, not to the verse itself. The translation toggle on this page will make the phrase appear and disappear.

Second, the indexes. Hymnary collects the scripture references that individual hymnals assign to this text. The ones that recur are Philippians 4:7, Colossians 2:14, Isaiah 34:4, 1 Corinthians 15:52, Isaiah 66:12 and 3 John 1:2. Across more than twenty hymnal listings, 2 Kings 4:26 shows up in one. The Hymnology Archive's line-by-line notes name Isaiah 66:12, 2 Corinthians 12:7, Colossians 2:14, 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Revelation, and do not name 2 Kings anywhere.

Third, the passage. If the borrowing were real it still would not mean what it is usually taken to mean. Verse 27 has Elisha saying her soul is in deep distress, and verse 28 has her putting a bitter question to him. The answer she gave twice on the road was not a report on the state of her soul. It was a woman refusing to be slowed down.

Sources

Audrey Assad — It Is Well With My Soul · (the recording checked for this proof; uploaded to Audrey Assad's own channel, oEmbed author_name "Audrey Assad")
Wikipedia — Inheritance (Audrey Assad album) · (hymns album, released 12 February 2016, Fortunate Fall Records; the track credited to Spafford and Bliss)
NewReleaseToday — lyric listing for the recording · (three Spafford stanzas with the refrain after each, no added modern material)
Hymnology Archive — It is well with my soul · (the three conflicting accounts of when it was written, the undated Library of Congress manuscript, the telegram, first publication in Gospel Hymns No. 2, and the line-by-line allusions, which do not include 2 Kings)
Hymnary.org — When Peace, Like a River · (author, composer, tune VILLE DU HAVRE, 1876 publication, and the per-stanza and per-hymnal scripture indexes)
Vineyard Churches UK — It is Well with My Soul · (an example of the 2 Kings 4:26 claim asserted without a source)
Discipleship Ministries — History of Hymns: "It Is Well with My Soul" · (the wreck-site account given as "said to have been penned," with no verse allusions identified in the text)
Wikipedia — Horatio Spafford · (the 1871 fire and his real-estate losses, the four daughters' names and ages, the "Saved alone" telegram, and his death in 1888)

Corrections

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