MLK and Exodus

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Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go!

Oh when Israel was in Egypt land
Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard, they could not stand
Let my people go!

So the Lord said, go down (go down) Moses (Moses)
Way (way) down (down) in Egypt land

Tell all Pharaoes
To let my people go (let my people go)

So Moses went to Egypt land
Let my people go!
He made old Pharaoh understand
Let my people go!

Yes the Lord said, go down (go down) Moses (Moses)
Way (way) down (down) in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go (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!

God the Lord said, go down (go down) Moses (Moses)
Way (way) down (down) in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go!

Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

MLK I Have a Dream

Rejecting slaveholders’ versions of scripture, enslaved folk preachers and songwriters engaged and reframed biblical texts about Hebrew bondage and escape—first from Egypt and later from Babylon. In “Go Down, Moses” and other spirituals about the Exodus, slaves depicted white Southern aristocrats as Pharaohs and themselves as Israelites.

As Albert Raboteau explains: “Exodus functioned as an archetypal myth for the slaves,” for whom the “sacred history of God’s liberation of his people would be or was being reenacted in the American South” (32). A white chaplain in the Union Army regretfully noted: “There is no part of the Bible with which [slaves] are so familiar as the story of the deliverance of Israel. Moses is their ideal of all that is high, and noble, and perfect in man.” The chaplain observed that slaves yearned for “a second Moses who would eventually lead them out of their prisonhouse of bondage” (qtd. in Raboteau 32–33). Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and other sterling African-American abolitionist and postbellum orators frequently paralleled American slaves to Hebrews in Egypt. Phillips Brooks and other white abolitionists occasionally did so as well. Following the Civil War, former slaves intent on moving to Kansas christened themselves “Exodusters.” In the early part of the twentieth century, African Americans sometimes viewed the Great Migration to the North as another Exodus.

“I Have a Dream” harnesses Amos 5:24 to call for the same Mosaic justice that Amos demanded—a quotation that is hardly accidental, for King reiterated it quite frequently. By citing Amos as he does, King appeals to Amos’s expression of God’s concern for an entire people and thereby affirms the fundamental assumption of Judaism that religious experience is profoundly social and the related presupposition that material and spiritual conditions are intimately and indissolubly related. As King explained earlier (in phrases adapted from Fosdick), “any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion” (Stride 91).

Second Isaiah Lands in Washington, DC: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" as Biblical Narrative and Biblical Hermeneutic

Keith D. Miller

Rhetoric Review

Vol. 26, No. 4 (2007), pp. 405-424 (20 pages)

Published By: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

See also: I Have a Dream: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Biblical Prophetic Speech thetorah.com

Using biblical quotes, imagery, and rhetorical devices, Martin Luther King Jr. envisions the hopeful future of African American people in the United States in the voice of a biblical prophet. Prof. Marc Zvi Brettler

See also:

The Haftarah Reading That Inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’

King’s speech draws on a part of Isaiah that Jews recite after Tisha B’Av—offering a model for revitalizing his mission, BY CHARLES KOPEL, JANUARY 13, 2014

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

MLK I Have A Dream

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

MLK I Have a Dream

Biblical Imagery

In addition to quotations, King also uses images that allude to biblical verses. Toward the beginning of the speech, he notes that “the Negro… finds himself in exile in his own land.” Exile is a biblical trope, calling up images of Judeans being carried off to Babylon to live in a foreign land. King’s point is to note the sad irony that, in this case, black people are Americans, yet they are treated as other in their own country.

I think it is necessary to say that what is basic and what is needed in the Middle East is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing.

Peace for the Arab side of that world is another thing.

Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.

On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.

CONVERSATION WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, King [Conference session], Conservative Judaism 22 (3). 68th Annual of the Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, New York. Copyright 1968 by the Rabbinical Assembly.

Quoted in: Washington, Dumisani. Zionism and the Black Church, 2nd Edition: Why Standing with Israel Will Be a Defining Issue for Christians of Color in the 21st Century

On the Middle East crisis, we have had various responses. The response of some of the so-called young militants again does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and certainly most of the organizations in the civil rights movement do not follow that course.

"CONVERSATION" ibid

SCLC [Souther Christian leadership Conference] has expressly, frequently and vigorously denounced antisemitism and will continue to do so. It is not only that antisemitism is immoral - though that [alone] is enough. It is used to divide Negro and Jew, who have effectively collaborated in the struggle for justice. It injures Negroes because it upholds the doctrine of racism which they have the greatest stake in destroying.

There isn’t anyone in this country more likely to understand our struggle than Jews. Whatever progress we’ve made so far as a people, their support has been essential. Probably more than any other ethnic group, the Jewish community has been sympathetic and has stood as an ally to the Negro in his struggle for justice.

Washington, Dumisani. Zionism and the Black Church, 2nd Edition: Why Standing with Israel Will Be a Defining Issue for Christians of Color in the 21st Century (p. 111). PublishDrive. Kindle Edition.