God's A-Gwine Ter Move All de Troubles Away

DESCRIPTION: "God's a-gwine ter move all de troubles away (x3), See 'm no more till de comi' day." "Genesis, you understand, Methuselah was the olde's man." "Dere was a man of de Pharisee, His name was Nicodemus and he wouldn't believe."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1919 (Curtis-Burlin-NegroFolkSongs-TheHamptonSeries)
KEYWORDS: religious death age
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Curtis-Burlin-NegroFolkSongs-TheHamptonSeries (II), pp. 69-81, "God's A-Gwine Ter Move All de Troubles Away" (1 text with variants, 1 tune with variants)
Roud #17443
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Samson and Delilah" (lyrics and theme of the Samson story)
NOTES [181 words]: Methuselah is not explicitly said to be the oldest man in the Bible, but in Genesis 5:27, he is listed in the Hebrew text as living to be 969, which is in fact the greatest age listed for any patriarch. We should note, however, that the ancient Samaritan version says 720.
The account of Jesus and Nicodemus is from John 3:1-21. This song follows the mistranslation of the King James Bible, which quotes Jesus as saying people should be "born again" when the clear intent of the Greek is to say they must be "born from above."
The story of Samson is in Judges 13-16, with the story of Samson and Delilah taking up chapter 16. The Biblical account does not say how many he killed -- 14:19 says he killed 30 in Ascalon, in 15:8 he commits a "great slaughter," 15:15-16 says he killed a thousand (exactly?), and at the end of chapter 16 he supposedly killed more than in his entire career up to then, but obviously there is no way to add that up to a particular total except that it must be greater than 2062 (which is twice 1000+3+1), assuming you take all those round numbers seriously. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.0
File: CuBu069

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