Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
So as I was sitting listening to the music at the Taps at Twilight Memorial Day celebration, a thought occurred to me. This was one of those things where you tell people what that thought is and they respond, “Only you would think of that!” It’s probably true.
The thought was this: “Wow, there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery in this song.” The song in question was the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Harriet Beecher Stowe. If you (like me) graduated from Glynn Academy than you are probably not too fond of this school. I however, still like it, and know the words (to all four verses). I knew them long before I had to sing the song at my graduation. Anyway, a brief analysis of the lyrical content of the Battle Hymn will illustrate what I am talking about.
Most of the apocalyptic imagery is concentrated in the first and third verses but there is a good deal of insight to the mindset of the people in the other verses so I will go over them as well.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He hath loosed the faithful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His Truth is marching on
The first line is fairly simple, the writer believes that the “end is nigh”, so to speak and the return of Christ is imminent. While most people associate the Apocalypse with death, mayhem and destruction on a cataclysmic and catastrophic scale, that is not the main point of the book. The word apocalypse is from the Greek apokolypsis for “unveiling, or a revealing” hence the title which the Apocalypse of St. John is better known as, the Book of Revelation. In 90 A.D. the Apostle John was imprisoned on Patmos and wrote letters to seven churches in Asia, with the goal of strengthening them in their trials and persecution under the Emperor Domitian. The main message was that in spite of all the tribulations, Christ, the Lamb, was in control and that He would return to personally defeat the evil ones and free the Christians from their persecutions. The writer of the Battle Hymn clearly believed that the abolition movement was a righteous crusade and that Christ not only approved their efforts but was actually the driving force behind them.
So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth’s vintage. He threw it into the great wine press of God’s fury. The wine press was trodden outside the city and blood poured out of the wine press to the height of a horse’s bridle for two hundred miles -Revelation 14:19-20
This “fury of God” is then poured into seven bowls and given to seven angels, who pour this fury out onto the earth, resulting in violent plagues and other calamities which punish the enemies of God and save His servants. John Steinbeck titled his novel The Grapes of Wrath for a similar reason. It is filled with biblical references, and as the reader shares the tragic exodus of the Joad family, one fills that God’s righteous anger is rising against all those in power who are taking advantage of them and one has the expectation that by the end of the novel, justice will be served. It was the same case with those fighting to end slavery. They saw slavery as an injustice that called out to heaven for vengeance and saw in the escalating conflict on the issue and the civil war that followed the wrath of God being poured out on the nation for allowing slavery to continue.
SPOILER ALERT: at the end of Revelation, after all the judgments, Jesus gloriously returns to earth, to judge the nations and usher in a thousand years of peace.
Out of His mouth came a sharp sword to strike the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod and He Himself will tread out in the wine press the wine and the fury of God Almighty -Revelation 19:15-16
I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps
They have built Him an altar in the evening’s dew and damps
I can read His righteous sentence by their dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on
In the writer’s eye, Christ is the true leader of the movement to end slavery. He is with the troops and among them and more importantly, the have built him an altar. They are honoring him by their service and their desire to end slavery. Of course, the writer does not literally see Christ in the midst of the assembled army but she sees the saving power of Christ acting through this force. The third line is most significant in the fact that their lamps, a necessary article of war, are the light that shines on Christ’s words so that they can be seen and understood. Essentially, the writer sees God through the actions of these fighting men.
He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat
Oh, be swift, my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet
While God is marching on
In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul states,
For the Lord Himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.
-II Thessalonians 4:16-17
A trumpet, or more accurately, a bugle, was used to call commands in war giving the signal to either charge or retreat. The writer is stating that she believes that Christ can never be defeated. Furthermore, this final trumpet is the last call for the entire world because it signals the return of Christ and, as Revelation indicates, the final judgment immediately follows His return. She knows that when this return comes, she must be ready to answer Him and prays that she will be swift because that would mean that she “is right with the Lord” and will not hesitate to answer for shame or knowing that her answer will condemn her. Further, if her feet are jubilant, than she is most likely dancing for joy.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!
As God is marching on
I am not sure what “beauty of the lilies” refers to, since they are not native to Judea, “across the sea” where Christ was born, but they probably refer to his purity and sinlessness and that of His Virgin Mother. What is more important is the third line. Christ died to save us from the slavery of sin and this last verse equates that redemptive death with the death of the men fighting to end actual physical slavery. It is great motivation.
Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.
-Matthew 28:20
In conclusion, we do not really know if Harriet Beecher Stowe actually believed that end of the world was upon her and that Christ was personally returning to lead the slaves to emancipation. People in every day and time see the Apocalypse around them, whether it was the Holocaust and World War II, or the violent wars of religion following the Protestant Revolt, or the Muslim conquest of Europe, everyone thought that their time would be the time, “The End Times,” even the Apostles. It is clear that the early church took Christ’s prophecies about the destruction of the Temple to apply to them and believed that Christ would return in their lifetimes. Peter and John say that “now is the end times” in their epistles and Paul says to “wait but a little while.” But it clearly was not the time. Even in this case, however, the lessons of Revelations apply to all times and all places. The people of God, doing his work, will always face trial and tribulation. The Church has said as much. And more importantly, the message of God’s saving power, that one day Christ will return to (literally) save the world from evil and destruction and “wipe away every tear” will always resonate and will both comfort those oppressed and inspire others to end the oppression.
Who said religion never accomplished anything good?
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
So I have something that I need to admit.
I watch American Idol.
Well, I don’t really watch it. The show does too much looking at the background of the contestants and self-promotion and talking about how great their celebrity “mentors” are that I usually just look at the performances on YouTube the next day. I was not that big into the show at all during its first few seasons but a couple years back I caught an episode my mom was watching. It was about the time I started getting into music, so I figured that I should at least check it out if I was serious about being a music fan since this was supposedly the newest talent in the music biz. I quickly found that “talent” is a term best used loosely and since I am primarily a classic rock fan, most of the time I would finish viewing an episode full of righteous indignation at whatever contestant butchered some classic. (I still remember Sanjayah Malakar’s god awful cover of the Kink’s “You Really Got Me” way back in season 6.) However, once I stopped bitching about how the contestants sucked at doing classic rock (and Motown for that matter) covers and how all the hot chicks got eliminated early (it’s true), and could pay attention I usually found a contestant I could root for.
This year it was Lee Dwyze (who won incidentally). I liked his style, music choices and the fact that he wasn’t a pretentious douche (yes, Casey James, I am talking about you). For his Top 3 performance, he had to do two songs, one of his own choice and one picked by the judges. Lee was assigned Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by Simon Cowell.
Here is his performance:
It was freaking amazing. I was not surprised that he pulled off the song well.
Simon himself said that “we have seen this song before.” That’s an understatement. Past contestants Tim Urban, Adam Lambert and Jason Castro have all done it. In my humble opinion, Lee did the best version of “Hallelujah” ever on Idol (Jason Castro was pretty good but not as much emotion as Lee had. Adam Lambert sounded like a woman. Seriously, I couldn’t tell he was a dude. Now, Adam, I know that’s your thing but it doesn’t really do it for me. And Tim Urban- don’t even get me started. He changed the lyrics! He sang I know that there’s a God above rather than Maybe there’s a God above. Seriously? That changes the whole meaning! I understand that Tim may be a Christian, and the agnostic lyric might have bothered but than he needed to pick a different song! The only time a lyrical change should be allowed is when singing the original would make the singer appear to be a homosexual. Wait, no, even than no change is authorized! It doesn’t seem to bother Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. If it does bother, than again, PICK A DIFFERENT SONG! Seriously, you suck, Tim Urban. You were that guy I hated in high school who thought he was cool but wasn’t. But I digress.)
Lee Dwyze’s performance of “Hallelujah” might rank up there with some of the best in all of music. In order to be able to say that I listened to as many different versions as possible (i.e. all the ones I could find on YouTube). And there are quite a number of them. Wikipedia reports that at present count there are 200 versions recorded in various languages. As evidenced by its abundant usage (some might say over-usage) on American Idol, “Hallelujah” has seen a boom in usage in recent years. It appeared in movies such as Shrek and Watchmen. I don’t know what it is about the song but it seems that everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to cover it. (Even some that shouldn’t) Bon Jovi (yes, Bon Jovi) did a version of it. Justin Timberlake tried. (seriously, Justin just stay with your crappy music) I think everyone accept the cast of Glee cast has done it. (Note to Glee: fix that) Some of the better versions include one by the Canadian Tenors, k.d. lang (I don’t know who that is either) Jeff Buckley and the most famous cover of all (perhaps even more famous than Leonard Cohen’s original version) by Rufus Wainwright. In my humble personal opinion, Wainwright’s is the best version, with Buckley’s as a close second and the Canadian Tenors a distant third. I might be biased, however, in my analysis since for me, Wainwright’s version is the original as it was the first I heard. It is in my Top 5 favorite songs, up there with Don McLean’s “American Pie,” the Beatles’ “Let It Be” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Like all this songs, it feature piano riffs and like “Don’t Stop Believing” it’s overplayed. But most importantly, it features allusions like “American Pie.” While “American Pie” has allusions to many different figures in popular music, “Hallelujah” has allusions, as you would expect, to Scripture.
Now let’s get things straight for a quick second. Don’t know exactly what “Hallelujah” is about? Look at the lyrics: There was a time you let me know/ What’s real and going on below/ But now you never show it to me, do you?/ Remember when I moved in you/ The holy dove was moving too/ And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.
Yeah. Still wondering?
Now some may scream “Blasphemy!” at the combination of sexual imagery with Biblical allusions in this song. For some people, those two things are like oil and water. (Thankfully, my very religious mom left it at my explanation of “It’s not exactly a hymn” when I was playing “Hallelujah” on the piano.) My answer to this: Have you read the Song of Songs? (a.k.a. Song of Solomon) That book of the Bible is all about sex. This is the divinely inspired Word of God we’re talking about here! (Granted, it almost didn’t make it in. But that’s not the point) And it’s about sex in a good and holy context.
Now, before we get into ancient fertility rites, Hieros Gamos, and other sorts of holy sex shenanigans, let’s clear a few things up. Many cultures have seen sex as good and sometimes even holy. It is, after all, how new life is brought into the world. The Church teaches, that God made sex, just like He made everything else, and like everything else He made “He saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:31) In fact, Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teaches that sex allows a married couple to join with God in the act of creation. So this connection with “Hallelujah” makes sense. It is when sex is used outside of God’s plan for it that things go awry.
Which I think is the point of the song. Someone pointed out to me that “Hallelujah,” at least the version I was listening to, is almost a dirge, a funeral song. It is clearly plaintive and mournful. And if you listen to the lyrics, the singer is mourning the loss of a relationship, a loss so profound he has lost all faith in love, God, anything. The song alludes to King David I heard there was a secret chord/ that David played and it pleased the Lord. Almost everyone knows the story of David and Bathsheba which is alluded to in the next verse: You saw her bathing on the roof/ Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you. After he saw her bathing on the roof, David lusted after Bathsheba but she was married to Uriah, one of his generals. He had his way with her, as they say, but she got pregnant. Back in those days, they didn’t have paternity tests, so David ordered Uriah back from the battlefield and told him to go home and sleep with his wife, so he would think the baby was his. Uriah refused, citing that his men were still in the field. They didn’t have Planned Parenthood back than either, so David couldn’t have the baby killed so he had Uriah killed. He than married Bathsheba, so it would look legit. This is considered the low-point of David’s reign. God turned his back on him and although David repented, his unborn child died as a result of his sin. In the song, this allusion to David is mixed with that of Samson She broke your throne/She cut your hair, referring to the infamous tale of how Samson confided in Deliah that the secret of his strength was his long hair and how Deliah than cut his hair and betrayed Samson to his Philistine enemies. In both these stories, great men and leaders are brought to their knees by their sexual attraction to an alluring woman. They do stupid stuff which leads to their downfall because of the controlling power of sex.
The song “Hallelujah” is in the first person but he is obviously singing to someone else. In the second verse he appears to be singing as a Uriah figure, perhaps to another who stole his lover. In a way he could be singing to himself, telling himself how foolish he was to be caught up with her. At any rate, he understands that she has broken him she broke your throne, tying him down and taking away his strength as Deliah did from Samson, that she still has power over him: From your lips she drew the Hallelujah. He says faith was strong/but you needed proof and that proof was when he meet the woman he is singing about. This man, the singer, has put his faith in love, even more specifically, in the physical aspect of love, and now he has nothing, since his lover has left him. She weakened him and controlled him, but than left so that he says Love is not a victory march/It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. For him, this rejection is almost as if God Himself abandoned him. He doesn’t even care if God exists or not Maybe there’s a God above because when she left he had nothing left to live for. If she was stolen from him by another, the singer has gained revenge, perhaps. All I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. But it still is not enough, since she has not returned to him and he states It’s not a cry you hear at night/It’s not somebody who has seen the Light/ It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. The man still holds his reverent view towards intimate love, which is why the song is almost liturgical, but he is broken beyond repair. He can never love the same way again, and all he remembers from it All I ever learned from love is hate and anger at how it ended.
At least that’s may interpretation
I watch American Idol.
Well, I don’t really watch it. The show does too much looking at the background of the contestants and self-promotion and talking about how great their celebrity “mentors” are that I usually just look at the performances on YouTube the next day. I was not that big into the show at all during its first few seasons but a couple years back I caught an episode my mom was watching. It was about the time I started getting into music, so I figured that I should at least check it out if I was serious about being a music fan since this was supposedly the newest talent in the music biz. I quickly found that “talent” is a term best used loosely and since I am primarily a classic rock fan, most of the time I would finish viewing an episode full of righteous indignation at whatever contestant butchered some classic. (I still remember Sanjayah Malakar’s god awful cover of the Kink’s “You Really Got Me” way back in season 6.) However, once I stopped bitching about how the contestants sucked at doing classic rock (and Motown for that matter) covers and how all the hot chicks got eliminated early (it’s true), and could pay attention I usually found a contestant I could root for.
This year it was Lee Dwyze (who won incidentally). I liked his style, music choices and the fact that he wasn’t a pretentious douche (yes, Casey James, I am talking about you). For his Top 3 performance, he had to do two songs, one of his own choice and one picked by the judges. Lee was assigned Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by Simon Cowell.
Here is his performance:
It was freaking amazing. I was not surprised that he pulled off the song well.
Simon himself said that “we have seen this song before.” That’s an understatement. Past contestants Tim Urban, Adam Lambert and Jason Castro have all done it. In my humble opinion, Lee did the best version of “Hallelujah” ever on Idol (Jason Castro was pretty good but not as much emotion as Lee had. Adam Lambert sounded like a woman. Seriously, I couldn’t tell he was a dude. Now, Adam, I know that’s your thing but it doesn’t really do it for me. And Tim Urban- don’t even get me started. He changed the lyrics! He sang I know that there’s a God above rather than Maybe there’s a God above. Seriously? That changes the whole meaning! I understand that Tim may be a Christian, and the agnostic lyric might have bothered but than he needed to pick a different song! The only time a lyrical change should be allowed is when singing the original would make the singer appear to be a homosexual. Wait, no, even than no change is authorized! It doesn’t seem to bother Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. If it does bother, than again, PICK A DIFFERENT SONG! Seriously, you suck, Tim Urban. You were that guy I hated in high school who thought he was cool but wasn’t. But I digress.)
Lee Dwyze’s performance of “Hallelujah” might rank up there with some of the best in all of music. In order to be able to say that I listened to as many different versions as possible (i.e. all the ones I could find on YouTube). And there are quite a number of them. Wikipedia reports that at present count there are 200 versions recorded in various languages. As evidenced by its abundant usage (some might say over-usage) on American Idol, “Hallelujah” has seen a boom in usage in recent years. It appeared in movies such as Shrek and Watchmen. I don’t know what it is about the song but it seems that everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to cover it. (Even some that shouldn’t) Bon Jovi (yes, Bon Jovi) did a version of it. Justin Timberlake tried. (seriously, Justin just stay with your crappy music) I think everyone accept the cast of Glee cast has done it. (Note to Glee: fix that) Some of the better versions include one by the Canadian Tenors, k.d. lang (I don’t know who that is either) Jeff Buckley and the most famous cover of all (perhaps even more famous than Leonard Cohen’s original version) by Rufus Wainwright. In my humble personal opinion, Wainwright’s is the best version, with Buckley’s as a close second and the Canadian Tenors a distant third. I might be biased, however, in my analysis since for me, Wainwright’s version is the original as it was the first I heard. It is in my Top 5 favorite songs, up there with Don McLean’s “American Pie,” the Beatles’ “Let It Be” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Like all this songs, it feature piano riffs and like “Don’t Stop Believing” it’s overplayed. But most importantly, it features allusions like “American Pie.” While “American Pie” has allusions to many different figures in popular music, “Hallelujah” has allusions, as you would expect, to Scripture.
Now let’s get things straight for a quick second. Don’t know exactly what “Hallelujah” is about? Look at the lyrics: There was a time you let me know/ What’s real and going on below/ But now you never show it to me, do you?/ Remember when I moved in you/ The holy dove was moving too/ And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.
Yeah. Still wondering?
Now some may scream “Blasphemy!” at the combination of sexual imagery with Biblical allusions in this song. For some people, those two things are like oil and water. (Thankfully, my very religious mom left it at my explanation of “It’s not exactly a hymn” when I was playing “Hallelujah” on the piano.) My answer to this: Have you read the Song of Songs? (a.k.a. Song of Solomon) That book of the Bible is all about sex. This is the divinely inspired Word of God we’re talking about here! (Granted, it almost didn’t make it in. But that’s not the point) And it’s about sex in a good and holy context.
Now, before we get into ancient fertility rites, Hieros Gamos, and other sorts of holy sex shenanigans, let’s clear a few things up. Many cultures have seen sex as good and sometimes even holy. It is, after all, how new life is brought into the world. The Church teaches, that God made sex, just like He made everything else, and like everything else He made “He saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:31) In fact, Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teaches that sex allows a married couple to join with God in the act of creation. So this connection with “Hallelujah” makes sense. It is when sex is used outside of God’s plan for it that things go awry.
Which I think is the point of the song. Someone pointed out to me that “Hallelujah,” at least the version I was listening to, is almost a dirge, a funeral song. It is clearly plaintive and mournful. And if you listen to the lyrics, the singer is mourning the loss of a relationship, a loss so profound he has lost all faith in love, God, anything. The song alludes to King David I heard there was a secret chord/ that David played and it pleased the Lord. Almost everyone knows the story of David and Bathsheba which is alluded to in the next verse: You saw her bathing on the roof/ Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you. After he saw her bathing on the roof, David lusted after Bathsheba but she was married to Uriah, one of his generals. He had his way with her, as they say, but she got pregnant. Back in those days, they didn’t have paternity tests, so David ordered Uriah back from the battlefield and told him to go home and sleep with his wife, so he would think the baby was his. Uriah refused, citing that his men were still in the field. They didn’t have Planned Parenthood back than either, so David couldn’t have the baby killed so he had Uriah killed. He than married Bathsheba, so it would look legit. This is considered the low-point of David’s reign. God turned his back on him and although David repented, his unborn child died as a result of his sin. In the song, this allusion to David is mixed with that of Samson She broke your throne/She cut your hair, referring to the infamous tale of how Samson confided in Deliah that the secret of his strength was his long hair and how Deliah than cut his hair and betrayed Samson to his Philistine enemies. In both these stories, great men and leaders are brought to their knees by their sexual attraction to an alluring woman. They do stupid stuff which leads to their downfall because of the controlling power of sex.
The song “Hallelujah” is in the first person but he is obviously singing to someone else. In the second verse he appears to be singing as a Uriah figure, perhaps to another who stole his lover. In a way he could be singing to himself, telling himself how foolish he was to be caught up with her. At any rate, he understands that she has broken him she broke your throne, tying him down and taking away his strength as Deliah did from Samson, that she still has power over him: From your lips she drew the Hallelujah. He says faith was strong/but you needed proof and that proof was when he meet the woman he is singing about. This man, the singer, has put his faith in love, even more specifically, in the physical aspect of love, and now he has nothing, since his lover has left him. She weakened him and controlled him, but than left so that he says Love is not a victory march/It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. For him, this rejection is almost as if God Himself abandoned him. He doesn’t even care if God exists or not Maybe there’s a God above because when she left he had nothing left to live for. If she was stolen from him by another, the singer has gained revenge, perhaps. All I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. But it still is not enough, since she has not returned to him and he states It’s not a cry you hear at night/It’s not somebody who has seen the Light/ It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. The man still holds his reverent view towards intimate love, which is why the song is almost liturgical, but he is broken beyond repair. He can never love the same way again, and all he remembers from it All I ever learned from love is hate and anger at how it ended.
At least that’s may interpretation
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