A joy of our Christian lives is our invitation to praise the Lord. We love to do this at any time and in many ways. One of the ways we praise Him is by using the word Hallelujah ! Almost all English-speaking Christians know how to pronounce that word, even though the word is not English, but some Christians may not know the nuances of meaning that the word can evoke. Next, I will explore the nuances.
Personally, Hallelujah , the word itself, has made me cry. Perhaps others have also wept. Many biblical books can bring tears, but for me, the Psalms, in particular, combine elements of poem, song and glorification, full of tears! Y Hallelujah it is frequently used in the Psalms. Today, the word is famous for both the title and the subject of the poet and composer Leonel Cohen, the masterpiece Hallelujah which many Christians and even non-Christians love.
Etymology and definition – What makes up the word Hallelujah?
Though Hallelujah is written as a single word, its Hebrew original comes from two words, which (both words and concepts) have been merged into one. The first half of the word, of the verb Hillel means to praise, and is used hundreds of times in Bible . Praise Praise be “jah”. “Jah” is an abbreviated form of the 4-letter Hebrew name for the Lord, YHWH which is usually pronounced Yahweh . By the way, there is a simpler form of that very word, spelled halal which suggests an alternative meaning: to boast. halal it is only used a few times in the Bible.
What does Hallelujah mean?
Clearly, a simple translation of Hallelujah is “Praise the Lord.” However, things related to biblical language are sometimes more puzzling than they appear to be on the surface. We conclude that the first half of the word is hillel, and therefore refers to praise (because that is the most frequent biblical usage). Praise is almost always directed toward the Lord. Sometimes the Hebrew authors use it to refer to humans.
For example, Genesis 12:15 uses the form of hill regarding Sarai, when she is praised to Pharaoh and therefore taken to his palace. Similarly, Proverbs 28:4 use the form of hill when he says that those who forsake the law praise the wicked.
The words of the Bible constitute the Lord’s inerrant message to us humans, but translation between human languages can confuse the message. What can we infer about the meaning of praise that the word is applied almost entirely to the Lord, but sometimes instead to a beautiful woman and also to admirers of the wicked? Sarai was a beautiful woman, but she was not Abram’s sister, that was a lie. To admire the wicked is to want to ally with the wicked. do Uses God deliberately to Hillel in these contrasting applications of praise for Self (good) against lies and admiration for evil (bad) for shock value? I do not know.
Suppose instead that we assert that the intended meaning is boasting , not praise. “Boasting in the Lord.” Boasting is a different act from praising, but each command can be supported by the Hebrew text. I’m not sure about this either. What I do know is that God gave us a language to glorify him. What I also know is that we complicate pure language by adding communication in the form of facial expressions, gestures, and spoken tones. Sorry to the poor translators who must end up with mere words on the page!
The Point – What is the point of the analysis of this biblical word?
The Bible is infallible. Perhaps our human intellect does not have the capacity to fully and completely understand the infallible word of the Lord, but we must still try. In the Bible, most of the uses of the word hallelujah be give in the psalms . hallelujah to sometimes it appears at the beginning of a psalm, sometimes at the end and sometimes at both, sometimes the word is internal within the psalm.
The psalms are poems. The psalmist (usually David, who writes for the Lord) uses Hallelujah and its cadence and subtleties to produce the most powerful effect on us when a psalm/poem is sung or read. The most powerful effect is the glorification of the Lord.
The Lord must be glorified, because that is our calling as human beings and sinners, and as believers. Given, then, that the intention of the word Hallelujah is to glorify, its referent must include both the low and the high, since we perceive the actions of the Lord as bad and good.
Death, for example, we generally perceive as bad. However, death is a provision of the Lord and as such belongs to the Lord and is therefore to be praised. hallelujah it is most commonly experienced as a liturgical command, as a prelude to something wonderful (and that is deliberate with respect to the word), but it must also be accepted in a melancholy way, almost in fact as an obstacle.
say the four syllables in english Hallelujah slowly, solemnly, with prayerful contemplation. Tell them again. Yours has been the whole experience of the work of the Lord, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, who is cheerful but, at the same time, is also sober, dignified, reverential, pious. What word.
A story of a beautiful hallelujah
It was the early morning of Christmas Eve. I called my wife at church. Ever since she and I came to Christ six years earlier, from Judaism, she had been our pastor’s secretary. He was checking me in, worried about the errands he had to finish while he was on the road. We talked briefly about errands.
So I asked him when he planned to come home from church. Strangely, she didn’t know. Usually she knows. Usually she knows because she knows what tasks she must complete. Usually she responds with an hour, an hour, two hours.
But this time, she was lazy. It was strange of her, my wife is not a lazy person, about the weather or anything else. “I don’t know,” is what she said, and she said it with a puzzled intonation, as if she were wondering why she didn’t know, and yet she said it anyway. I was also stumped when I hung up.
I thought maybe I should call him back to see if he was okay. I thought maybe I should question her puzzled tone, which suggested that she didn’t feel in charge of her time that afternoon. But I didn’t call him back. I had to run errands.
This is what I learned later. After hanging up, an hour or two passed in the church. My wife was alone. She finished the tasks. There is always a task to finish on a secretary’s desk. But, disconcertingly, she did not formulate a plan to finish her homework and get home.
Then the door of the church opened and a man came in whom my wife had never seen. The man introduced himself and asked if the pastor was there. The shepherd was not.
The man seemed puzzled by the circumstance that the pastor was not in the church. “But God told me that he should come see him now.”
“Well, do you want me to make an appointment for you, for later?”
“But God told me that I should come see him now.”
This is how my wife related the conversation to me; after all, the man was puzzled. He had done what God had told him to do. Now, it was the shepherd’s turn.
The pastor had left the church not long before, with various plans in mind. He wasn’t sure which of the plans he would undertake. He would let my wife know what plan he would undertake, he said, when he knew himself.
My wife dialed the phone. The shepherd answered.
“There’s a man here,” he said, and she gave her name. “He says he needs to see you. He wasn’t sure about your plan.
“Well, I haven’t selected my plan yet. I don’t know why. Right now, I’m having lunch.” The shepherd thought for a moment. “Can you wait ten minutes?”
My wife looked at the man. “Can you wait ten minutes?”
“Yes.”
He turned to the phone. “He can wait. See you in ten.
In ten minutes, the pastor arrived at the church. He and the man entered the pastor’s office. Two hours later, the man accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord, and his name was written in Glory.
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah hallelujah
That same night, on the eve of Christmas Eve, my wife and I relaxed on our couch. Our house was aromatic with complimentary breads to bake. Our Christmas tree was lit with white bulbs, wax candles burned between our mantelpiece of fir branches and red baubles, and we lit twinkling candles in our windows so that, as my mother told me when I was a child, regarding Christian custom, if Baby Jesus should need a place to lie down, He would know from our candles that He would be welcome here.
My wife had explained to me the strange occurrences of that afternoon: the man was shocked why the pastor should not be in his office when God had instructed him to be, my wife was shocked at his inability to manage a time to get back to our house. that she was available at just the right time to make that phone call to our pastor, our pastor was stumped because he hadn’t selected from his plans for the afternoon, so he was, at the right time for the man, just having lunch.
We heard Susan Boyle sing Hallelujah . The solemn words filled the room. We are busy people, her and I, multiple jobs between us, retirees who still work hard, and I had a new book coming out, a memoir chronicling my life as the son of a poet father, a father whose poetry shaped my relationship. with our father.
Relaxing on our sofa, tired after days and days of heavy work for both of us, nearing the conclusion of our Advent of a miracle, trying humbly to experience our anticipation patiently, the beauty of the season and the light of Christ overthrew me.
I cried. I wept for Cohen’s spare elegiac poetry. I cried for Boyle’s easy voice. I cried for the calm and beauty of our decorated house. I cried to give bread as a gift to our friends, bread that my wife had created.
But most of all I wept that, on the eve of Christmas Eve, the Lord Himself had used my wife and our pastor for His own purpose, which was to lead another soul to salvation, that godly use, which had baffled every one of us. them, as the Planning of their day was put aside.
Hallelujah Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah.