The song opens with a rumor. David once played a secret chord that pleased the Lord. The singer walks through how it goes, the chord changes falling and lifting, and pictures a baffled king writing a hallelujah.
Then the king falls. His faith was strong, the singer says, but he wanted proof. He saw a woman bathing on a roof, and her beauty in the moonlight overthrew him. The story slides into another one. She tied him to a chair and cut his hair. The hallelujah that came out of him after that was dragged from his lips.
By the end the singer is speaking for himself. He did his best, and it was not much. He could not feel, so he tried to touch. He has told the truth and did not come to fool anyone. When everything has gone wrong, he says, he will stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on his tongue but hallelujah.
So the singer stands at the edge with no record to show. He has heard what praise was meant to be in David's chord, and he has failed the way David failed. He still has the word, and he intends to say it.
The Song and the Singer
Leonard Cohen worked on "Hallelujah" for years. He wrote around eighty verses for it and kept four for the record (Forward via St. Louis Jewish Light). It appeared in 1984 on Various Positions. Columbia Records turned the album down for American release. The label's president told him, "Look, Leonard, we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good" (American Songwriter). A small independent label put it out instead.
For years almost no one noticed. Then John Cale recorded it, and Jeff Buckley recorded Cale's version. Later an animated film about an ogre made it famous (Wikipedia). It is now sung at weddings and funerals, often by people who leave out the roof and the kitchen chair.
Cohen grew up in Montreal's Jewish community, and his song reaches for the Hebrew Bible. He also insisted, more than once, that it was not a religious song in any formal sense. Shortly after the album came out he explained the title. "All the perfect and broken Hallelujahs have an equal value," he said. He called the song a desire to affirm his faith in life, with enthusiasm and emotion (Atwood).
He took the word seriously, even while he kept God at arm's length. The song says as much. Its singer admits he does not know the Name, and he sings the praise anyway.
The King and the Strong Man
The secret chord has a source. When an evil spirit troubled King Saul, his servants found a shepherd boy who could play. "And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him" (1 Samuel 16:23). David's music reached a place words could not.
The relief did not last. Two chapters later the spirit came back on Saul while David was playing, "as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it" (1 Samuel 18:10–11). Even the chord that pleased the Lord could not fix the king.
The roof has a source too. "And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon" (2 Samuel 11:2). The man who wrote the psalms took another man's wife and arranged his death. The song's word for it is exact. Her beauty overthrew him.
Then Cohen folds in Samson, the strong man who told Delilah his secret. "And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head" (Judges 16:19). When he woke, he thought he would shake himself free as before. "And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him" (16:20).
Two men chosen by God, both undone by desire. Each lost the ease of his first praise. Whatever hallelujah came out of them after that would be the broken kind.
Open Thou My Lips
David did write a hallelujah after the roof. Psalm 51 carries a heading that says when. It is "A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." The whole psalm is a confession. Near the end David asks for one thing.
O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 51:15–17)
In the song, a woman drew the hallelujah from the king's lips. In the psalm, the king asks God to open them. The praise that follows is broken, and God says he will not despise it. Cohen said the holy and the broken hallelujah have equal value. David says something stronger. The broken one is the sacrifice God asked for.
Samson's story ends the same way. Blind and chained, he was brought out to entertain his captors. "Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven" (Judges 16:22). His last words were a prayer. "O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once" (16:28). God heard it.
Cohen's singer plans to stand before the Lord with nothing on his tongue but one word. That word is Hebrew. הַלְלוּיָהּ, hallelu-Yah, is a command in the plural: all of you, praise Yah. He admits he does not know the Name. David knew it, and so did Samson, and both came to God with nothing left but a broken heart. They were heard. The singer's last hallelujah, broken as it is, is the kind of offering Scripture says God will not turn away.