Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! But I repeat myself. Of these two exclamations, the latter is nothing but a translation of the former. They are two expressions of the same thought like two sides of the same coin. Here lies a simple, yet thorny, question for translators to answer—which translation should they choose?
Hallelujah, appearing often in the Book of Psalms, is actually two Hebrew words. The first is hallu, which is a command to a group of people to give praise. This imperative appears numerous times in Psalm 135:1, which reads, “praise [hallu] the Lord! Praise [hallu] the name of the Lord; give praise [hallu], O servants of the Lord!” The companion to hallu in “hallelujah” is Yah. This is an abbreviated form of the tetragrammaton, or name of God, YHWH, which is often spelled and pronounced Yahweh. Together, hallu and Yah make our English “hallelujah!” It is with this great exhortation that Psalm 135 actually opens: “hallelujah [hallu-Yah]! Praise the name of the Lord; give praise, O servants of the Lord!”
Quite a few psalms are bookended by hallelujahs, both opening and closing with this exhortation. For Psalm 135, just as it opens with a “hallelujah,” so too does it close with one: “blessed be the Lord from Zion, He who dwells in Jerusalem! Hallelujah [hallu-Yah]!” These opening and closing words govern the psalm; they frame the poem at its outset and, at its end, are the savory aftertaste on the reader’s tongue.
An exclamation such as hallu-Yah poses a tricky question for translators. Should they borrow the word from Hebrew, render it as “hallelujah,” and preserve its original sound and ebullience, even though the unacquainted reader’s comprehension of the text may become more blurry? Or should they translate the phrase literally, giving readers the more precise “praise the Lord,” but depriving them of the age-old, widespread, and spirited “hallelujah?”
Because most translations anticipate that readers are not privy to this etymology, they render hallu-Yah as “praise the Lord” instead of “hallelujah.” When you read these words in the Psalms, therefore, anticipate that a hallelujah lies just across the language gap. Truly, there is no translation that can replace the spirited vigor that wells up when one cries, “hallelujah!” So, I dare say, hallelujah!