Go Down Moses

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"Go Down Moses" is an African-American spiritual that describes the Hebrew Exodus, specifically drawing from the Book of Exodus 5:1, in which God commands Moses to demand the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. "And the LORD spoke unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me". As is common in spirituals, the song refers to freedom, both the freedom of the Israelites, and that of runaway enslaved people. As a result of those messages, it was outlawed by many enslavers. The opening verse, as published by the Jubilee Singers in 1872: Superficially, the song refers to Biblical narrative of the Exodus. That story held a subversive meaning for enslaved African Americans, because they related their experiences under slavery to those of Biblical Israelites under Egyptian slavery, and the idea that God would come to the aid of the persecuted resonated with them. "Go Down Moses" also makes reference to the Jordan River, commonly associated in spirituals with reaching freedom, because the act of running away often involved crossing one or more rivers. Since the Old Testament recognizes the Nile Valley as further south, and thus, lower than Jerusalem and the Promised Land, heading to Egypt means going "down" while going away from Egypt is "up". In the context of American slavery, that ancient sense of "down" converged with the concept of "down the river" (the Mississippi), where enslaved people's conditions were notoriously worse. Later verses also draw parallels between the Israelites' freedom from slavery and humanity's freedom won by Christ.