We’ve all heard the word alleluia spoken or sung. Sometimes it’s pronounced and spelled hallelujah.
I realized a while back that I knew almost nothing about the word alleluia. So I decided to do some online research. Among other things, I learned that the main difference between alleluia and hallelujah is that the alleluia is a word used in liturgies and hallelujah is a religious song.
Nowadays it’s often used as a way to say HOORAY. It also means thank God, or more formally, praise God or praise the Lord.
If you look it up online, or in one of those archaic information storage devices called a dictionary, you will discover that the traditional meaning of the word is PRAISE THE LORD. It’s said to be derived from two Hebrew words, hillel or hallel meaning an exhortation of joyous praise, and Yah, an abbreviation of Yahweh, the name of God.
The word Alleluia is used 24 times in the book of Psalms in the Old Testament, twice in other books of the Old Testament, and four times in the Christian Book of Revelation.
New Testament accounts of the Last Supper state that Jesus and his disciples “sang a psalm” or “hymn” after the meal, which was probably the Hallel. The Last Supper was almost certainly a celebration of the Passover, and Jesus, like any other Jew in the first century, would have known how to chant the Psalms in Hebrew, especially the famous Hallel psalms which were an integral part of the Passover.
I also found out that there are words resembling alleluia in other languages. Please overlook my mistakes in trying to pronounce some of them!
In Arabic, there’s hallil, meaning ‘praise!’ And Alhamdulillah (Al-hamdu lillaah) is an Arabic phrase meaning Praise be to God or Thank God. Some sources argue that Hallelujah is a linguistic compression of another Arabic phrase ‘halilu lillah’ (halil li Allah) “raise your voices in hailing Allah”.
Would you believe alleluia can also be a battle cry, a pesky lawn weed, or part of a Greek myth?
Now, some linguists trace the root of “hallelujah” to the ancient and still existing practice of repetitive ululation: “ha-la-la-la-la....” which is usually done by women, mainly in the Middle East and parts of Africa and India. It’s used to express joy, but also for mourning and sorrow.
The word might even come from ancient Sumeria. I found part of a NY Times article about the first dictionary of the Sumerian language. One of the dictionary’s co-editors, Erlc Leichty, was quoted saying hallelujah was originally a Sumerian word, pronounced ”E-el-lu-lil-lum”. What it means I never found out, because it’s behind a Times paywall.
But on one website I did find a Sumerian proverb written down 4,000 years ago. It reads:
(What characterizes) the carpenter is the chisel
(What characterizes) the reed weaver is the basket
The blacksmith (is known to) make tiny sides
(What characterizes) the professional singer is ua alala
The word Alala, for the ancient Babylonians, was the name of a god who personified a song of joy, not unlike our Hallelujah. In both Sumerian and another ancient language called Akkadian, ‘alala,’ and ‘alalu,’ are exclamations of joy.
And in ancient Greece, Alala was the name of a goddess of war. That name probably came from a battle tactic of Greek warriors. When they marched into striking distance of an enemy, they broke into a battle cry of “Alala!” or “Eleleu!” while banging their weapons against their shields to scare enemy horses. The Greek poet Hesiod, who lived around 700 years BC, claimed that Athenians used Eleleu because it sounded like an owl, the sacred bird of their patron goddess Athena.
The Roman poet Ovid wrote that Eleleu was a common nickname for Dionysus among the Greeks. He added that Eleleu or Alale is a loud cry or shout – joyous, dolorous, or defiant.
Plutarch, a Greek historian and writer of the late first and early second centuries AD, told the story of the hero Theseus, who was sent to kill a monster called the Minotaur.
When Theseus succeeded and returned to Greece, his crew forgot to take down the ship’s black sail, which symbolized sorrow. Theseus’s father King Aegeus saw the black sail from the Acropolis. In his grief, thinking Theseus was killed, he threw himself to his death. So the people waiting on the shore cried “Eleleu, iou, iou!” — the eleleu meaning triumph, and the iou, iou part meaning consternation and confusion.
The Theseus legend and the phrase, “Eleleu! iou! iou!, were memorialized in a grape harvest festival honoring the wine god Dionysus. Worshipers used the cry so much that they became known as the Eleleides.
War, joy, triumph, praise, sorrow.
So why is the word alleluia spoken, sung or shouted in Catholic and Protestant churches and in some Unitarian Universalist congregations on Easter Sunday?
A Catholic website I found explains that they view Alleluia as a song for preparing to hear the Gospels: “The word is an attempt to write out the sound of joy and praise that has been coming from the human heart for thousands of years. Think of the ululation of Middle Eastern peoples, the rapid tongue noises at times of joy and of mourning. This can be written out as “le-lu-le-lu.” By adding breathing sounds before and after, we would roughly have “a-le-lu-a,” or ALLELUIA. It is an expression of great praise and belief. So connected with praise and joy is it that we do not sing it at all during Lent”
My daughter enlightened me further about this in an email.
“Hi Mom,” she wrote. “I was gingerly brushing my teeth when a phrase popped into my head: “Bury the Allelulia.” That was the phrase I needed to remember. I was correct in that it is removed from the Liturgy during Lent. “
She found an explanation for the phrase online. One of the traditions in France was writing the word Alleluia beautifully on a board and burying it in the church garden at the beginning of Lent, to be dug up again at Easter.
And while we’re mentioning gardens, alleluia is also the English folk name for true wood sorrel, which has white or pink flowers and blooms around Easter time there. It’s closely related to the common wood sorrel, which has little yellow flowers and spreads annoyingly over our flowerbeds.
So today it’s Easter, time to dig up our own Alleluia
and bring it out again.
Why do we Unitarian Universalists say Alleluia on Easter?
Reverend Robin Bartlett wrote that Unitarian Universalists
“say Hallelujah because we need resurrection now more than ever.
New life where there once was death.
Hope in the face of fear.
We need to say, “yes, life, I will hold you like a face between my palms, and I will try to love you again.”
Love wins! Hallelujah!”
Alleluia!
Say it with me!
Alleluia!
Say it louder!
Alleluia!
And so this service ends.
From a 2019 Easter service I led at the Sugarloaf Congregation f Unitarian Universalists, Germantown, Maryland.
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