Leonard Cohen: If It Be Your Will

SONG If It Be Your Will

SONGWRITER Leonard Cohen

APPEARS ON Various Positions (1984), The Essential Leonard Cohen (2002), Live In London (2008)

ALSO A superb version of "If It Be Your Will" appears on the bootleg of Cohen's 1988 appearance on Austin City Limits. (See video below.)


Author of a collection of psalms, Leonard Cohen has long been fascinated by religious imagery. This especially includes Christian allusions, which appeared as long ago as 1967’s “Suzanne.” (“And Jesus was a sailor/When he walked upon the water”).

“If It Be Your Will” is a simple statement – a prayer, really – of resignation that begins with a promise to surrender a singer’s most treasured asset – his voice – if God deems it necessary. Cohen makes the promise without condition, implicitly accepting that, as Abraham Lincoln put it, the Almighty has his own purposes.

Having made his pledge, Cohen raises the stakes in the second verse, promising to sing the praises of God if only God will let him. In doing so, he subtly invokes the presence of Christ via his use of the phrase “broken hill,” an allusion to Calvary. We know this is so because of a long-time Cohen association of the word "broken" with Christ. In "Suzanne," "he himself was broken"; in concert patter, Cohen often refers to the cross as a "broken tree." Thus, in the first two verses, Cohen offers up to God's will the greatest gifts he has: Silence and song.

Cohen has long been interested in the possibilities of imperfection: In "Anthem" he writes "There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." The concluding two verses disclose Cohen's notion of God as a God of mercy and unification, one with the capacity of forgiving all of the "burning hearts in hell" and binding "all your children here/In their rags of light." We may be dressed in spiritual rags, but their very imperfection invests them with the power the potential of revelation.

Although he composed "If It Be Your Will" in 1984 during the nascent years of the Christian right, there's a prescient, gentle rebuke of those who would see God as force of repudiation and polarization. To the contrary, Cohen argues: God is a god of revelation and forgiveness, if we will only let him.

LYRICS
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.