After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for phis judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” (Revelation 19:1-2 ESV).
Just the other day Mary said, “I’ll be glad when you’re finished with the devotionals in Revelation.” I simply asked, “Why?” She said, “They’re scary.” Well, they are, at least until we reach this point in our reading and study. With the beginning of the 19th chapter, we see the chorus of praise erupting in heaven singing “Hallelujah!” Interestingly the English language isn’t enough to capture what we want to say. Thus, we often import words from other languages — Italian words like alfresco, Spanish words like taco, even French words and phrases like bon voyage, rendezvous, or faux pas. But some of the words we’d like to import use letters that look very strange in English, so in those cases we try to preserve the sound of the original word while using English letters. It’s called transliteration. An example would be a Greek word like metropolis. The word hallelujah is a transliteration of two Hebrew words: hallelu and ah. When you write down those two Hebrew words using the closest equivalent letters we have in English, you end up with that strange and beautiful word hallelujah.
The first Hebrew word hallelu means “let us praise.” And the second word is Yah, which is the short form of Yahweh, the very specific, personal name of the God of Israel. Yahweh has its origin in the name God revealed to distinguish Himself from all other gods. When God speaks to Moses for the first time and calls him to bring His people out of slavery in Egypt, Moses says, “If the Israelites ask me Your name, what should I say?” And God responds, “I AM WHO I AM.” (Genesis 3). The name Yahweh is built out of the Hebrew word for “I AM.” So, it’s a name that is intended to make us marvel at the self-sustaining, eternally existing, utterly transcendent nature of this God, the true and living God who is quite unlike any other pretender to the throne. When the name Yahweh appears in the Old Testament, it’s often translated “LORD” in capital letters in our English translations, to mark it out from the more generic word “God.” So, hallelujah means “Let us praise Yah.” Let us join in worshiping and praising this God—Yahweh—and no other.
In the Old Testament, the word hallelujah is used twenty-four times, all of them in the book of Psalms. If you look at the climactic final psalm, Psalm 150, the word hallelujah bookends the whole psalm, appearing as it does right at the beginning and right at the end. In some translations, you might see the phrase “Praise the LORD” instead of “Hallelujah,” but it’s there in the original. In the New Testament, the word is used four times, all in the book of Revelation, and all in chapter 19. The word is cried out by a vast crowd in heaven, and interestingly, the initial cause of this praise for Yahweh is His avenging judgment. We don’t often think of saying hallelujah for the judgment that Yahweh will pour out on those who’ve rebelled against Him—certainly not when we’re breezily whistling along to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” which is based on this passage of Scripture—but there it is. As the word hallelujah reminds us, Yahweh is our God. We are His people. He identifies so personally with us that when we are downtrodden or persecuted because of Him, Yahweh takes it very personally. And He makes it right! That is cause for celebration!