Today’s song from Sing Praise has very simple words: Hallelujah. That’s it. To be more precise it’s Geoff Weaver’s arrangement of a Caribbean chant, best sung in four parts, of which John managed at least two.
The word Hallelujah (or alleluia, as you prefer) is of Jewish origin, just meaning ‘Praise God’ or ‘Praise the Lord’. It’s a widely known word outside religious circles, perhaps through the Jewish musician Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name with some religious references in the lyrics, or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, or more profane uses such as the popular disco song of the 1990s ‘Hallelujah, it’s raining men’. Many people use it as an epithet on its own, either to give thanks to God for some small answer to prayer, or in an ironic way (“Hallelujah, he’s understood it at last!”) Perhaps this just reflects the basic human instinct for praise, whether of God or other people. The present song is very joyful in style, as indeed praise should be. If praise is expressed reluctantly or unenthusiastically, it isn’t really praise.
Yes, it’s a fun song. Etymologically it’s wrong: the word is actually two words “Hallelu” which means praise, and “Yah” which is an abbreviation of the divine name “Yahweh” YWHW (“I am who I am” – Exodus 3:15) which is usually indicated “the LORD” (with the name in capitals) in translations. So the song “Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia, praise ye the Lord” has it right, but this one breaks the word in the wrong place. But, hey, who’s bothered? As Stephen says, God probably isn’t bothered if our praise comes from the heart
I rather wish I had been able to video this song with the congregation singing it, when one half stands for “Halle” and sits for “luia”, and the other half does the opposite – but of course you can’t do that when you are solo and also playing the piano. And actually my singing was three parts, because when you only have one voice you can’t really do more than three parts properly spaced-out across the range of the voice. It is very difficult to balance the parts in Microsoft Photo Editor, and I haven’t got that right yet!