Rise, Shine, for Thy Light Is A-Coming

Lyrics

The lyrics below are preserved exactly as documented in nineteenth-century primary sources. Dialect, spelling, and phrasing reflect the living tradition of the communities who created and sang these songs. Standardizing the language would erase the historical record. See our editorial standards for more.

Historical Context

"Rise, Shine, for Thy Light Is A-Coming" is a jubilee spiritual built on the prophetic summons of Isaiah 60:1 — "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." It is a song of dawning, of a light on the way, of a promised deliverance drawing near. It was carried by the Fisk Jubilee Singers — who recorded it in an arrangement by John W. Work III — and documented by James Weldon Johnson and in John Wesley Work's American Negro Songs and Spirituals (1940).

The refrain's forward tilt — "thy light is a-coming," "He's coming by and by" — keeps the whole song oriented toward an approaching deliverance that has not yet, but will surely, arrive.

Cultural Significance

The command to "rise" and "shine" is a summons to readiness and to hope. Isaiah's words were addressed to a people in exile, promising that their light was coming and the glory of the Lord would rise upon them; for the enslaved community, that promise mapped directly onto their own condition and longing. The light that is "a-coming" is the light of deliverance — spiritual and, unmistakably, earthly.

The second verse makes the earthly meaning explicit: "This is the year of jubilee... My Lord has set His people free." The "jubilee" was the Levitical year of release, when debts were forgiven and captives freed (Leviticus 25) — one of the most charged words in the enslaved community's vocabulary, naming a scriptural promise of liberation they claimed as their own. To sing that "my Lord has set His people free" was to declare freedom as an accomplished divine fact, however the present world denied it.

The resolve of the final verse — "wet or dry, I intend to try, to serve the Lord until I die" — grounds the song's soaring hope in steadfast, everyday commitment. Whatever the conditions, the singer intends to persevere.

Scholarly Notes

John Wesley Work III's arrangement for the Fisk Jubilee Singers is part of the long Work-family stewardship of the Fisk repertoire, through which a great many spirituals were preserved, arranged, and carried to the world.

James Weldon Johnson classified the jubilees — of which this is one — as distinct in spirit from the sorrow songs, marked by driving rhythm and confident, forward-looking hope.

The song's fusion of Isaiah's "arise, shine" with the language of jubilee and freedom exemplifies the tradition's typological imagination, in which the prophecies of ancient Israel were read as living promises to the enslaved, and it remains a rousing staple of the jubilee and concert-spiritual repertoires.