In one of the great poems in our language (and I assure you, it is our language), Lewis Carroll tells the story of a young boy who defeats the Jabberwock and saves a village from certain annihilation. The brave kid voluntarily sought the manxome foe, sliced its body into bits, and returned with its head. Stirring stuff. And when the old man saw the slight boy return down the path to the village, Jabberwock head in hand, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
Presumably, everyone in the village understood what callooh and callay meant. But we don’t. Nineteenth century British poets like Lewis Carroll were always making stuff up. It’s sort of what poets do. And in Hebrew, the last word of Psalm 106, the last book of Book IV, is the word from which we get, hallelujah. This word only shows up 23 (maybe 24) times in the Old Testament, and always in the Psalms, but this is not surprising. After all, callooh, callay, isn’t it just like a poet to make stuff up?
Hallelujah is an intensive and reflexive form of the Hebrew verb, halal, which is, praise. Awkwardly appended to the verb (because this is what poets do) is another word, yah, a shortened version of YHWH, the sacred name of God. This sacred name, four Hebrew characters (nicknamed, tetragrammaton) is first proclaimed out of the burning bush. God teaches this name to Moses, and so Moses appears at both the beginning of Book IV (in Ps. 90) and right here at the end. When Moses asked God what to say to people who ask him the name of God, God said, “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14). Philologists argue about whether hallelujah is an unusual combination or not. It could be that this is just what people naturally proclaimed during Temple worship and the poet turns the exclamation into words as best he can. You, too, would have a problem knowing how to spell, hey-batta-batta, but no one struggles to chant this at a ballgame. Some philologists think the poet is creating a brand new word, smashing together halal and yah into a new compound word (like backstop or baseball).
Regardless, when we come by this word in the New Testament, it pours from the lips of resurrected people gathered around the throne of God in the New Heavens and the New Earth. These worshippers, a great multitude of them, are overcome with delight that Jesus is both Victor and King and shout, “Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God … the Lord our God the Almighty reigns” (Rev. 19:1, 6, and 3, 4). Callooh! Callay!
Psalm 106 is the longest of Book IV. There’s no sin in jumping to the end. Perhaps you already noted hallelujah in verse 1? More on that elsewhere. For now, look at the last two verses. Hallelujah, “praise the Lord,” is a high and solemn praise to God, the God whose sacred name is enfolded into the praise of His children in such a way that God has allowed His powerful name to be abbreviated and shouted back at Him in adoration. The poet of Psalm 106, whoever he is, finishes on a cry that echoes long into the future. He is making this his application of all 48 verses. What are we to do with our lives? We praise the Lord! Why? He has saved us and gathered us together, from everlasting to everlasting. Our explicit response to this is to “give thanks to [His] holy name.” Did you catch that? Thanks is owed to His very name. And so, according to the vocabulary of the poet, we sing that name every time we shout, praise the Lord!
John F. Jones
King's Cross Senior Pastor
