Interpreting Hallelujah
People around the world are familiar with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The song has long been a staple of western culture, covered by hundreds of artists throughout the world. However, people are still unclear as to the meaning of the song. I will explore one of many interpretations, one I believe is best supported by the text more than any other, focusing on the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s original recording. In the last two decades, the song has been interpreted as a “hallelujah to the orgasm” (Jeff Buckley) or a “very sexual” composition discussing relationships (Allison Crowe), but this should not be the lens with which we view the song.I will endeavour to show the song not as a blasphemous religious metaphor for a sexual affair, or Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah to the orgasm’, but in fact a song that shows a man so broken with depression and despair, so disconnected from the Word of God, so empty, that he finally has nowhere else to turn but to God, and to sing his praises, literally, to sing ‘Hallelujah’.This theme and other variances have long been explored in Cohen’s work in songs such as ‘If It Be Your Will’, ‘The Future’, and his collection of fifty psalms, ‘Book of Mercy’.First, I will analyse the lyrics of the song itself. For the sake of time, only the four verses in the original recording will be presented here. Then, I will look at other work of Cohen’s published around the same time period, such as other songs on the Various Positions album and his collection of psalms, ‘Book of Mercy’. Let’s begin with the first verse of the song:
I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, But you don’t really care for music, do you? Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, The baffled King composing Hallelujah
The song begins ‘Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord’. And this secret chord that is spoken of, played by David, can only be a divine chord given to David alone by God. This secret chord is perhaps a metaphor for the divine inspiration bestowed on David that allowed him to write so many of the Psalms. That is why it was so pleasing to the Lord, because David was writing what God was showing him. We don’t know what divine inspiration feels like, but perhaps David had a choice in the matter. Perhaps he could have turned away from this divine inspiration, this secret chord that God was handing down to him. It pleases the Lord, therefore, that David has chosen to play this chord.Later in the same verse is the line ‘It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled King composing Hallelujah’. This line is commonly paired with the chord progression Cohen included here, with ‘the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift’ perfectly aligning with ‘F, G, Am, F’. However, there is potentially another meaning behind these words, especially when taking the ending of the line, ‘the baffled King composing Hallelujah’, into account. The song already mentions David, a psalmist. These numbers could be referring to the psalms of the Old Testament. Now, the only way to see if this is a viable option is to look at psalms six and seven, coming right after the fourth and fifth, and we can see if these psalms are indeed a ‘minor fall’ and a ‘major lift’.The ESV Global Study Bible describes Psalm 6 as follows:
An individual lament from David. It describes a person whose hard circumstances have led him to see his sins and to repent.
With this information, and the language of the psalm, one gains a good picture of how this may be the ‘minor fall’ Cohen was referring to. Some language from this psalm are as follows: ‘My soul is greatly troubled’, ‘I am languising’, ‘I am weary in my moaning’, ‘Every night I flood my bed with tears’, ‘I drench my couch with weeping’, ‘My eyes waste away because of grief’. This language is certainly a minor fall compared to the previous psalm, ‘let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them sing for joy and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord;’. Clearly, this is fairly minor language.For this hypothesis to be correct, the seventh psalm must also be a ‘major lift’ from this penitential psalm we’ve just read, and the language supports this. In contrast to the previous psalm, we see language such as ‘In you I do take refuge’ and ‘O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart’ and ‘I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High’. This is a clear change in tone, and fits with the language of the line Cohen wrote. The ESV Global Study Bible says that psalm seven ‘enables those who have been unfairly criticised and persecuted to call on God for help’. Clearly, it is not impossible that ‘the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift’ could be referencing the psalms, especially after mentioning David, the author of these psalms just two lines before. Of course, what makes this such a viable option, even more so than just the match up with the music, is the end of the line: ‘the baffled King composing Hallelujah’.There are many differing opinions on the exact nature of divine inspiration, but most Christians agree on some sort of supernatural intervention when the authors of the Bible wrote what became the Scripture. If we can agree on this, we can agree that David was divinely inspired when he wrote the psalms he is accredited as the author of. I can only imagine writing divinely inspired words must be baffling. He would have been a ‘baffled King’ when he composed those words. In fact, I think baffled is an understatement. Let’s take a look at the second verse:
Your faith was strong, but you needed proofYou saw her bathing on the roof, Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you, She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
This verse seems to be referencing 2 Samuel 11, where “David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the King’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful”. It is in this chapter that David commits adultery with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. He saw a beautiful woman, had her brought to him and “he lay with her”. He then, in verses 6–13, tries to hide the adultery from Uriah the Hittite instead of settling the matter openly. Cohen has taken this passage and explored the idea of irresistable desire. This is a verse that has often led people to believe the song is a “hallelujah to the orgasm”, physical desire or something similar, using biblical metaphors for physical acts, but it is indeed not so. The verse does explore adultery, but from the standpoint of brokenness, and sinfulness. David is King of Israel, anointed king over Israel “before the Lord” (2 Samuel 5:3), but with this sinful act of adultery, one which he does not repent for, but in fact tries so desperately to hide, he ends up sending Uriah to be slain on the battlefield so he never discovers his wife’s infidelity. His throne, his holy reign over Israel, is broken by this heinous act. His burning passion and desire for Bathsheba breaks his throne. As for the cutting of the hair, this Bible Dictionary describes the cutting of hair as “tokens of grief”, and also a figure of the “entire destruction of a people”. Figuratively, as Israel’s leader is corrupted, so are the people of Israel. Of course, in both of these instances, Cohen writes that she breaks the throne and she cuts the hair. It was his desire for her that caused this, it was her beauty.It is likely Cohen was aware of this intertextuality at the time of writing, for his grandfather, Solomon Klonitsky-Kline, was a Rabbi and Cohen has stated he spent much of his childhood in the scripture of the Old Testament.The third verse is written as follows:
You say I took the name in vain, But I don’t even know the name, But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light in every word, it doesn’t matter which you heard, the holy or the broken Hallelujah
The first two lines return us to the desperation being felt by this narrator. Some accuse him of blaspheming, of taking the Lord’s name in vain, but his response is he’s so lost, he doesn’t even know the name that he’s accused of taking in vain. He’s so far removed from his relationship with the Lord that he doesn’t even know how to call out the Lord’s name. He’s left with nothing but the only word he knows how to exclaim, left so desperate that he can only yell a word that means nothing else but pure praise of the Lord.Then, the ‘blaze of light in every word’ likely refers to Scripture itself (“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” Psalm 119:105, “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord” Jeremiah 23:29). And again, we see the desperation of the narrator. He’s fallen so low, he’s found that it doesn’t matter which you hear, the Old Testament alone, broken (just like David’s throne), documenting the fall of man, or the New Testament, new and full of promise, with Jesus as the Word becoming flesh, dying for all our sins. Both of these praise God, and both of these contain the singular Hallelujah that he needs to get back to God, to lose his lost way.The fourth verse continues the same idea:
I did my best, it wasn’t much, I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch, I told the truth, but I didn’t come to fool you, And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
The first line references Man’s inability, despite its greatest effort, to do anything relative to the greatness of God. The second line refers to the extreme ‘lostness’ of the narrator, and how when he couldn’t feel God’s presence, he tried to touch it through burning passion and desire (the theme explored in the second verse). And by telling the truth, yet not fooling God, that indicates Man’s inability to know absolutely any universal truths, and the only being truly capable of knowing absolute truths is God Himself.It is the last three lines of this closing verse that tie everything together. These lines sum up both the narrator’s position, and the ultimate message of the song. “Even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah”. Even though Man fell, even though the narrator has fallen into a deep abyss of darkness and sin, he has found there is nothing left to do but build the courage to stand naked and bare before the Lord, the Lord of Song, the creator of language, of sound, of Hallelujah, of exultation, and let nothing at all leave his tongue but pure praise, pure Hallelujah. This is what this song is about.But how can we be sure? Why does this interpretation hold more water than any other? Looking at the text alone, we cannot say. However, if one looks at the works Cohen published at the same time, it soon becomes clear.Cohen’s ‘Book of Mercy’, published in 1984, the same year as Various Positions, the album Hallelujah was first released on, is a collection of fifty psalms Cohen wrote to help him deal with his deep depression. The book is often seen as a companion to the album. We will look at two that both frame the themes of the book as a whole, and help represent these ideas in comparison to ‘Hallelujah’.Firstly, Psalm 1:”I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I began again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and it did not work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.”This psalm instantly begins the book with an exploration of the vertical relationship. Firstly, like ‘Hallelujah’, it deals with a man who has lost himself, and is trying to return once again to God. Only once the loss deepens (and if we revisit Hallelujah, as the loss deepens, so does the desperation) does he hear God again. But how do we even know that this person is speaking of God? Well, only a divine being such as God is capable of such a paradox as moving ‘haltingly’. This text is also soaked in humbleness and humility. Is there anything more humble than moving ‘haltingly’ towards your throne? Than reluctantly asking permission to sing? The speaker finds himself below all this, incapable of such humility in this current place of darkness, broken.Psalm 50 ends the book in a similar mood, yet the speaker seems more aware of the power of this humility, and how much he needs this humility that God can offer him.I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my lost victory. But you are here. You have always been here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller’s heart for his turning.This psalm displays where Cohen found himself at the end of his fifty-psalm journey. He realises that he forgot to call on God’s name. Rather profoundly, the speaker has come to realise that God’s name ‘unifies the heart’. The poem, and therefore the entire book, ends with an understanding of what we are all waiting for.We can also see these themes in other songs on the Various Positions album. A good example is ‘Coming Back to You’, the second track on the album. The lyrics point decidedly towards a coming back to God, with lines such as ‘I looked for you in everyone and they called me on that too, I lived alone, but I was only coming back to you’. Also, the closing track, ‘If It Be Your Will’, is a man giving his worship and praise to a higher being, if it be that being’s will. It is humbleness and faith it its upmost form.
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
Looking at the body of work that surrounds ‘Hallelujah’, and also the lyrics themselves, and the strong intertextuality between the song and different Biblical verses, it is clear that this religious interpretation of this song, placing any sexual implications under the umbrella of sin and brokenness, and the dichotomy between a holy and a broken relationship, is the most appropriate.
From a purely spiritual level, this would explain the immense power of this song. While there are an incredible number of critically acclaimed songs about sexual impurity, none of these songs have had the profound effect on our global population that this song has. This song has inflitrated cultures around the globe, sung both as a celebration and as melodic mourning after tragic events. This song transcends sexual impurity and appeals to something deep within every one of us. It speaks to the universality of our fallen selves. It speaks to the part of us that recognises there is something out there to be praised, and this is most often something we only come to realise in our darkest moments. Cohen himself has always been ambiguous about the real meaning of this song, but what he has said almost proves this idea of universality:
This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can … reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah’.
This quote, while not overtly Christian, or even spiritual, speaks to this idea of universal sin. One could even replace ‘conflicts’ with ‘sin’ and no meaning would not be lost. These moments that allow us to reconcile are these moments of ‘Hallelujah’, these moments of pure praise that give us the opportunity to lift our conflicts, our sin to God, are what this song is about.