Go Down, Moses

Negro Spiritual, pre-Civil War

Our Hymn of the Week is one of the most haunting and powerful that I know, as it speaks not only to the dire injustice of slavery in the American south before the Civil War, but to the state of all mankind suffering in bondage.

I’ll admit here that the prisons we build for ourselves are the hardest of all from which to escape, and it is well said that hell is a prison locked on the inside. That is why, in the popular cycles of mystery plays of the Middle Ages, everybody looked forward to the one about the Harrowing of Hell, which would portray Satan and his flunkies desperately trying to keep Christ out and Adam and Eve in, along with everybody else who was faithfully waiting for the Messiah to come. At Wakefield, Jesus doesn’t even argue with the demons. He says, three times, in Latin, “Lift up your portals, eternal gates, and be upraised, and let the King of Glory enter in!” At the third utterance, as it seems from the text, he merely touches the gates with his staff, and — bang! They open — probably spring-loaded, waiting for just that touch. But that form of imprisonment does not detract from the agony of being imprisoned unjustly by your fellow man. Surely we fellow prisoners — sinners, waiting for the inevitable night to fall — ought to be merciful to one another.

I think that most of the slave owners in the old South had a bad conscience about it. They read the New Testament, whose entire thrust is against bondage and towards “the glorious liberty of the children of God,” as Paul says. Now, bad conscience doesn’t always mean that you will ease up on the people you are treating badly. Sometimes it’s the reverse: you take out your discomfort on them, blaming them for what you yourself are responsible for. But no matter what the owners did, their faith did demand that they share that faith with the slaves, and that meant that the stories of the Old Testament would be in their minds, stories of liberation from slavery: Joseph in Egypt, and then all the children of Israel from their former allies and now taskmasters, overlords, slave-drivers, and child-murderers, the Egyptians under a new Pharaoh “who did not know Joseph.” In the Old Testament, you really cannot take two steps away from that great event of deliverance, culminating in what the Jews cherished as God’s most signal act of favor and love: his giving them the Law to live by, as free men and women, bound not to any overlord, but to the God whose very Law is one of deliverance and freedom.

So the story of Moses, and the people’s escape from Pharoah and his mighty chariots and charioteers, stirred the spirits of the African American slaves, and one of the songs it inspired was this one, which we know by the first line, “When Israel was in Egypt’s land,” or by the first line of the refrain, “Go down, Moses.” Down meant south from where Canaan is, but also down in the moral sense, as if Moses had to descend into a hell on earth, no matter how rich and splendid it was for the Egyptians.

One of the clips that Debra has found for us below is of Francis Hall Johnson (1888-1970), the grandson of a Methodist bishop (A. M. E.), who did as much as anyone to give the Negro spiritual a permanent and honored place in American folkways and hymnody, a place it eminently deserves. Johnson taught himself the violin when he was a boy; his sister tutored him on the piano; and the lad got as fine an education as was available for him at the time, which, considering the eloquence of his writing, must have been excellent. Johnson was the founder and leader of the Hall Johnson Choir, composing plenty of music in his own right, and performing a great deal of that music for dozens of feature films, including one of our favorites at Word and Song: Lost Horizon. But the melody of this song — how strange it is, with its dive down to the lowest note, which I think best calls for a baritone or a bass, on the last syllable of the enslaver, Pharaoh — how strange, yet filled with hope, not optimism, but hope, surging up like the sea that will soon cover Pharaoh, as those sojourners of Goshen beheld “from the safe shore their floating carcasses / And broken chariot wheels.” Francis Hall Johnson might have had this song especially in mind when he wrote of the spiritual:

“Its most tragic utterances are without pessimism, and its lightest, brightest moments have nothing to do with frivolity. In its darkest expressions there is always a hope, and in its gayest measures a constant reminder.”

When Israel was in Egypt's land,
Let my people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go!
Chorus:
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land.
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go!

"Thus spoke the Lord," bold Moses said,
"Let my people go!
If not, I'll smite your firstborn dead.
Let my people go!"  Chorus.

"No more shall they in bondage toil!
(Let my people go)
Let them come out with Egypt's spoil;
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

The Lord told Moses what to do
(Let my people go)
To lead the Hebrew children through.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

O come along Moses, you'll not get lost;
(Let my people go)
Stretch out your rod and come across.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

As Israel stood by the water side
(Let my people go)
At God's command it did divide.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

When they reached the other shore
(Let my people go)
They sang a song of triumph o'er.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

Pharaoh said he'd go across
(Let my people go)
But Pharaoh and his host were lost.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

O let us all from bondage flee
(Let my people go)
And let us all in Christ be free.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

You need not always weep and mourn,
(Let my people go)
And wear these slavery chains forlorn.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.

Your foes shall not before you stand
(Let my people go)
And you'll possess fair Canaan's land.
(Let my people go!)  Chorus.