September 23, 2009

• Hallelujah!

  I am preaching from the Psalms now.  I have been since before Easter.  One of the things I like to do is research the words and phrases in the original languages.  Of course, Psalms were written in Hebrew; but, about 400 years before Christ the Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew into Greek.

  The translation was necessary because Alexander the Great conquered the then known world and mandated that Greek be used everywhere. Letters, contracts, and laws, everything was to be in Greek.  As a result, the Jews were losing their ability to read the Scriptures.  The Rabbi’s decided to give the people the Scriptures in the language they spoke, thus we have the Septuagint (LXX).   This gives us light on their understanding of the Old Testament as we compare the Hebrew with the Greek.

  The Psalm I used Last Sunday was Psalm 113:

          [1] Praise the LORD!

          Praise, O servants of the Lord,

          Praise the name of the Lord.

          [2] Blessed be the name of the Lord

          From this time forth and forever.

          [3] From the rising of the sun to its setting

          The name of the Lord is to be praised.

          [4] The Lord is high above all nations;

          His glory is above the heavens.

   

          [5] Who is like the Lord our God,

          Who is enthroned on high,

          [6] Who humbles Himself to behold

          The things that are in heaven and in the earth?

          [7] He raises the poor from the dust

          And lifts the needy from the ash heap,

          [8] To make them sit with princes,

          With the princes of His people.

          [9] He makes the barren woman abide in the house

          As a joyful mother of children.

          Praise the LORD!

  The opening and closing phrases of the Psalm are the same: “Praise the LORD!”  I’ve blogged before about the all caps “LORD” being the Divine Name, this time I want to focus on the phrase “Praise the LORD.”

  In the Hebrew (without vowel points) Praise the LORD is הללו יה.   The KJV, the NIV, and the NASB all translate the phrase accurately as “Praise the LORD.”  The Divine Name is represented in the phrase in its ending; the phrase ends with the ending of the Tetragrammaton; יה.  The entire name is not there, but it is represented in the ending.

  I mentioned the Greek LXX in order to bring a different slant on the phrase.  Our modern translations correctly translate the words as Praise the LORD.  But that is not what the Jewish scholars did with their translation into Greek; let me show you the Greek: αλληλουια.  You can read that word if you don’t let yourself be intimidated by the Greek; and if you just anglicize the letters, its “Hallelujah!”

  The Hebrew says “Hallelujah!”  The Jewish scholars that translated the LXX from the Hebrew did not translate the words, but chose to transliterate them so the Hebrew sounds were brought over into the Greek text phonetically.  The Greek language gained a new word!  The meaning is the same, but the Hebrew pronunciation is the preserved.

  Well that made me curious, so using BibleWorks8, I did a search on the word “Hallelujah.”  It’s a common enough word in our hymns and praise songs, I figured the word would be all over the place in the Bible, especially the Old Testament and even more so in the Psalms and Proverbs.  Not so!  In the English translations, Hallelujah occurs four times, all in Revelation chapter 4 (verses 1, 3, 4, & 6).  But even a search of the Hebrew only produced 23 hits in 23 verses, and ALL of those were limited to the Psalms.  None in any of the recorded prayers of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Eli, Hannah, Ruth, Esther, David (except the Psalms) or any of the Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any of the others!  I was shocked.

  Are there worship words and phrases that God intended for worship alone?

  • 10:02 am
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