Carried Home

Rate this song

Click a number to rate

About this song

Good Samaritan in song, part 2.

Lyrics

[Intro - instrumental, flute and guitar]
[Verse 1]
I don't go to their temple
And they don't come to mine
We've been spitting at each other's shadows
Since before my grandfather's time
They say we got the scripture wrong
They say our holy hill's a fraud
They cross the street when they see us coming
Like we're something cursed by God
[Verse 2]
But I was riding down to Jericho
On a donkey older than my debt
When I saw a man lying in the road
In the worst shape a man can get
Now I knew he was one of them
Could tell it by his face and clothes
I knew if things were turned around
He'd leave me for the crows
[Verse 3]
But here's the thing about a man bleeding out
Here's what the priests won't understand
You don't consult the law or weigh your standing
You get down and use your hands
So I knelt there in his blood and dirt
Poured my oil and wine into the wounds
Tore my shirt to wrap his broken ribs
And I didn't think of temple rooms
[Verse 4]
He looked at me like I was impossible
Like mercy from an enemy couldn't be
But I just saw a man who needed help
And that's what he was to me
I lifted him onto my donkey
Walked seventeen miles down
To an inn where they know my name
On the outskirts of the town
[Verse 5]
I faded somewhere between the road
And something darker still
I remember hands that weren't my people's hands
Doing what my people never will
He smelled like foreign oil and wine
He spoke the way we mock
But he held me like a brother
And he carried me off that rock
[Chorus]
I'm a man of the road
Just a man of the road
Carried by a stranger I was taught to hate
I'm a man of the road
He's taking me home
[Verse 6]
I've run this place for twenty years
Seen what the road can do to men
So when the Samaritan brought this one in
I just cleared a room again
He paid me two days' wages up front
Said keep him breathing, keep him fed
Whatever more it costs you
I'll settle when I'm back, he said
I've heard that promise many times
From better men who don't return
But something in the way he laid those coins down
Something in the way his eyes burned
[Verse 7]
I woke up in a bed I didn't know
A room that smelled of oil and bread
The innkeeper brought me broth and said
You're lucky you're not dead
Who? I asked him. Who brought me here?
And he told me, and I lay still
A Samaritan, of all the ones who travel
A Samaritan against his people's will
[Verse 8]
My priests walked by with their clean robes
My Levite with his righteous song
A man I would have spat upon
Is the only one who came along
[Final Chorus]
I was a man of the road
Just a man of the road
Left for dead by the ones who should have known
I was a man of the road
And a man I called enemy
A man I was taught to despise
Saw something my own people couldn't see
Saw me with his own eyes
I was a man of the road
He carried me home
A man I called enemy
Carried me home
[Outro - spoken]
So who was neighbor to the man who fell?
I'll leave that for you to work out
On your own road
In your own time
When it's your blood running out

Comments (0)