It’s written by Lenard Cohen, a Canadian singer song-writer who was Jewish. Overall, the song is about a relationship that has gone sour. However, there is a lot of religious imagery. In the first verse Cohen sings,
“Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord”
This is a reference to King David from the Old Testament(AKA, the Torah). He becomes infatuated with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, after seeing her bathing on the roof. This is referenced in the second verse like this:
“You saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you”
David then sends Bathsheba’s husband on a suicide mission and marries her when he dies. After that, David’s son tries to overthrow him and there’s a lot of drama stemming from his lust driven choice, and the eventual fallout is reflected in the song’s minor key.
Cohen’s next biblical reference is later in the second verse, when he sings,
“She tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair”
This is a reference to Samson, from the Book of Judges. He has incredible strength that’s he has used to fell many armies, and he reveals to his wife Delilah that it all comes from his hair. Delilah, being bribed by the Philistines, cuts his hair while he sleeps and turns him over to the Philistines.
These are both stories in which love is portrayed as a weakness instead of a strength. In the story of David and Bathsheba love is a drug that confuses one’s moral compass, and in the story of Samson and Delilah it is one that distracts the tactical mind.
The next three verses really go into the struggles of having your life intertwined with someone you no longer love, while also lamenting the loss of something once beautiful and real, singing,
“And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah” (Verse 3)
“Well there was a time when you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah” (Verse 4)
“all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya”(Verse 5)
But my favorite like in the whole song is in Verse 5, when Cohen sings,
“Maybe there’s a God above”
This is really a line that encapsulates the Jewish experience. There’s a Jewish joke that goes something like, “Two Rabbis are talking one night, debating the existence of God. At the end of the night, they both come to the conclusion that God does not exist. The next morning, one of the Rabbi’s sees the other heading to Temple. ‘I thought we decided God doesn’t exist’ he said. The other responds, ‘Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?’”** It is fundamentally Jewish trait to question God, both the existence of God and the actions of God. There are many Jewish people, me included, who don’t believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense, but who believe in being a good person who is grateful for all we have on this earth. That’s why it bothers me so much when people say this song is a “church song”, because it’s not about a blind faith in a higher power. It’s about not knowing what exists outside of our universe and yet continuing to live anyway. When talking about the song, Lenard Cohen stated, “Hallelujah is a Hebrew word which means ‘Glory to the Lord.’ The song explains that many kinds of Hallelujahs do exist. I say: All the perfect and broken Hallelujahs have an equal value. It’s a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion.“
So, though Hallelujah is a song that really encapsulates much of the human experience, which can absolutely apply to people of the Christian faith, it is not a Church song. It is a fundamentally Jewish song, written by a Jewish man, about living life despite uncertainty about the existence of powers beyond the ones we understand.
**Sorry I didn’t tell it well, I tried.
