I heard Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” being played in a subway the other day. A musician was playing it on a steel drum, giving it a calypso spin. It was lovely, and it had me humming the tune all day. It is easily Leonard Cohen’s most popular and covered song, appearing everywhere, from movies like Shrek, TV shows, and countless albums. And still, despite its ubiquity, it is a puzzle. It has become an anthem that can be sung at any stadium, arena, or bar. People ask for it when they want to give a touch of sanctity to a secular funeral or wedding. Yet, despite its popularity as a secular anthem about passion, it is rooted in Cohen’s Jewish faith, with some really clear Biblical references that most people don’t catch.
Cohen was born and raised as a Jew in Montreal, where he was steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first half of the song is addressed to King David, the one who killed Goliath as a youth. In addition to this famous act, King David was credited with being an accomplished musician and songwriter. Tradition holds that he wrote the Bible’s hymn collection, the Psalms ( possible for some, impossible for others). So, Cohen’s song starts with David, the ultimate holy singer in the Jewish tradition. David writes “a secret chord” that pleased the Lord, and sings Hallelujah, a word that means “God be praised.”
But David’s song writing chops are not the only reason Cohen wants to invoke the singing King. David was also known for his faithfulness to God, and for a serious moral failing. One day, the older King David sees a beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing naked next door to his palace. David has her sent for so he can have sex with her. He knows that she is married to one of his loyal generals, who is currently at the front. So, David, the faithful, moral king, has just committed adultery ( and possibly sexual assault, but the Bible doesn’t mention that).
Then it gets worse. Bathsheba gets pregnant. David covers his tracks by having the husband put in harm’s way and killed by enemy forces. This is the story that Cohen invokes when he says “Your faith was strong but you needed proof/ You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.” So, this is not an innocent seduction. Cohen knows this. Then the song riffs on the Samson and Deliah tale, by suggesting that this bathing beauty tied up David, and cut his air, taking his strength away. “She tied you to a kitchen chair/ She broke your throne, and she cut your hair/And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”
Cohen is playing with the tension between faith in God and the much more visceral feelings of devotion we feel towards our lovers. People can be oblivious to the Biblical references in his song and still clearly hear a paeon to sexual passion and its complications. I think this is why this song has been so popular. We worship sex as one of the few human experiences that feels transcendental, a high like no other. It is a peak experience that can be reached without years of meditation, Torah study or praying to God. Since the 1960s, sex, and the pleasure that comes with it, have become the equivalent of a human right, something we praise and demand. Few men are willing to become priests if it means never having sex again, so seminaries are emptying out. Cohen captured that tension between religious faith and sexual passion with his chorus of “Hallelujah.”
I suspect most casual listeners hear the emphasis on earthly pleasures and temptations in the song, but Cohen wants that to coexist with faith in God, how ever uneasily. He is asking why can’t this world be holy, even in its brokenness and difficulties? ”There's a blaze of light in every word/It doesn't matter which you heard/The holy or the broken Hallelujah.” Cohen’s song yearns for both kinds of experience to coexist, knowing that this isn’t usually the way sexual passion and its convolutions are seen by religion. In later life, Cohen became a Buddhist, perhaps trying to escape worldly passion through enlightenment. Yet, his gift to the world was his music, where the holy and earthly desire are always intertwined, like lovers in rumpled sheets. Not many people can write theological riddles that float through the air in a busy subway. Thank you Mr Cohen. Peace.
-Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto.