I Know That My Redeemer Lives: A Song History

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Samuel Medley (1738–1799) wrote this Easter hymn as a meditation on Job 19:25–27, turning Job’s declaration into a celebration of the risen Christ.[1][2] Born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, Medley served in the Royal Navy and was badly wounded in an engagement with the French in 1759; after his conversion he became a Baptist minister, first at Watford and from 1772 in Liverpool.[1] The hymn appeared without his name in the 21st edition of George Whitefield’s Psalms & Hymns (1775), and Medley later placed it in his own Hymns, published in London in 1800.[1] Sources differ on how many stanzas the original had, and hymnals have long printed it in abridged forms; Hymnary.org now indexes the text in nearly five hundred hymnals.[1][2][3]

Engraving of Job and his wife standing beneath a tree while their sons and daughters play harps, lyres and horns, with sheep at their feet

William Blake, So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning, plate 21 of Illustrations of the Book of Job, engraving, 1825. Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Because the text is in long meter, it can be sung to many tunes, but its standard partner is DUKE STREET.[1][2] That tune appeared anonymously in Henry Boyd’s Select Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1793) and was credited to John Hatton of St Helens, Lancashire, in William Dixon’s Euphonia (1805); the name is traditionally said to come from the street where Hatton lived.[4] Collections as different as the Lutheran Service Book and the African American Heritage Hymnal set Medley’s words to it.[3][5] The notable exception is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which included the text in its first hymnbook in 1835 and today sings it to a separate tune by Lewis D. Edwards (1858–1921).[6][7]

The hymn should not be confused with Handel’s similarly titled soprano aria that opens Part III of Messiah, first performed in Dublin in 1742; its words, drawn from Job and 1 Corinthians, were compiled by Charles Jennens.[8][9] For mountain dulcimer players, Medley’s hymn appears in Stephen Seifert’s gospel collection Join the Jam: Gospel Edition.[10]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" (text, with notes from Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology).
  2. Wikipedia: "I Know That My Redeemer Lives".
  3. Hymnary.org: "Lutheran Service Book 461".
  4. Hymnary.org: "DUKE STREET" (tune).
  5. Hymnary.org: "African American Heritage Hymnal 276".
  6. Hymnary.org: "Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 136".
  7. Hymnary.org: tune by Lewis D. Edwards.
  8. Wikipedia: "Messiah Part III".
  9. Britannica: "Messiah (oratorio by Handel)".
  10. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".