“Put Your Hand in the Hand”
(of the Man from Galilee)
Hear Ocean Sing Their Hit Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh4Y9lT75Kw
This song is by Ocean and appears on the album Put Your Hand In The Hand (1971) and on the compilation Super Hits of the '70s: Have a Nice Day, Vol. 4 (1990).
Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently By puttin' your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee Every time I look into the Holy Book I want to tremble (tremble) Or when I read about the part where the carpenter cleared the temple (temple) For the buyers and the sellers were no different fellas than what I profess to be And it causes me shame to know we're not the people we should be So, put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently By puttin' your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee My mama taught me how to pray before I reached the age of seven She said, "there'll come a time when there'll probably be room in heaven" But I'm feeling kinda guilty 'bout the number of times to do what we must do But we forget what he said, then we figure that he'll still make room So, you gotta put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently By puttin' your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee Everybody come along Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water (Who stilled the water) Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea (Who calmed the sea)
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently
By putting your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.
Writer/s: GENE MAC LELLAN Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Citations for above: https://lyrics.fandom.com/wiki/Ocean:Put_Your_Hand_In_The_Hand and https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/ocean/put-your-hand-in-the-hand
Songfacts: Stories behind the song’s lyrics.
Internet source: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/ocean/put-your-hand-in-the-hand
Toronto, Canada's quintet Ocean featured singer Janice Morgan, singer-keyboardist Greg Brown, bassist Jeff Jones, guitarist Dave Tamblyn and drummer Charles Slater. Their first single, "Put Your Hand in the Hand," a #2 pop hit in America in 1971, was written by Gene MacLellan, who'd played with Robbie Robertson in both the Consuls and the Suedes.
Several singles followed during the early '70s, but none were as popular as the debut. Ocean disbanded in 1975. version of Robbie Robertson's "The Stones That I Throw," originally released on a Levon and The Hawks single in 1965, was included on Put Your Hand In The Hand.
The album was re-released as a budget CD on the Unidisc label in 2000. On their second album, Give Tomorrow's Children One More Chance, Ocean did a version of The Band's "Just Another Whistle Stop" from Stage Fright.
The narrator realizes she's no different than the sinners in the Bible, recalling when Jesus, who worked as a carpenter, chastised merchants for selling goods in the temple (Matthew 21:12-17 and John 2:13-22). Morgan trembles as "the sellers were no different fellas than what I profess to be. "The song also references when Jesus calmed the sea in Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, and Luke 8:22-25.
During a storm that threatened to overturn their boat, the panicked apostles woke Jesus and begged him to help. Jesus didn't see what all the fuss was about and simply commanded the waves to be still. He asked his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"
Ocean was not a gospel group and didn't feel a strong connection to the religious aspect of the song. According to Greg Brown, they were hesitant to release the single. "We were concerned that it might give the group a gospel image," he explained in the book Axes, Chops, and Hot Licks. They were right. The group was typecast as a gospel rock band thanks to the Jesus-themed debut.