Composition
"I Will Sing of My Redeemer" was written by Philip Bliss (text, 1876) and set to music by James McGranahan (tune "My Redeemer," 1877). Bliss wrote the words days before he died in the Ashtabula railroad disaster of December 29, 1876; the manuscript was found in his luggage among the wreckage. McGranahan composed the tune for a collection published in Bliss's memory, and the hymn became one of the most powerful statements of cross-centered praise in the evangelical revival tradition.
Biblical Text
Psalm 89:1 - "I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations" - provides the governing declaration. The psalm is David's great meditation on God's covenant with him and through him, the promise that despite the apparent failures of the Davidic dynasty, God's steadfast love (hesed) endures. The declaration "I will sing" is not an expression of current happiness but a vow of praise made in the midst of circumstances that might seem to contradict it - the same vow that underlies the African-American spiritual tradition.
Revelation 5:9 - "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation" - provides the content of the "new song" that the hymn enacts: praise for redemption through Christ's blood, the same song the elders sing before the Lamb in John's vision.
Creator and Legacy
Philip Bliss (1838-1876) was one of the most gifted hymn writers of the Moody-Sankey revival era; his death at thirty-eight cut short a career that had already produced "Almost Persuaded," "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning," and "Hold the Fort." The circumstances of the discovery of "I Will Sing of My Redeemer" - found in the wreckage of the train that killed him - gave the hymn a quality of posthumous testimony, as if Bliss had written his own memorial before his death without knowing it.