The Fourth Alleluia

The noise comes before any words do. John reaches for three comparisons and settles on none: a crowd, a river in flood, thunder overhead. All three are heard in the chest before a syllable arrives.

Alleluia! sing to Jesus. William Chatterton Dix wrote that line in the eighteen sixties, a man who managed a marine insurance business in Glasgow and wrote hymns outside office hours; the accounts of the illness supposed to have produced his first ones differ enough that I would not lean on them. What he did was open a hymn with a Hebrew word English never translated, hallelu-yah, praise the LORD, and hand it to congregations who have sung it ever since without needing it explained.

That word lands in the New Testament four times, all four in this chapter, the first immediately after a city has fallen. For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. The word most sung in Christian worship makes its New Testament debut over rising smoke.

By the fourth one the subject has changed. The Lord God omnipotent reigneth is an announcement, the kind of sentence a herald reads when a reign has begun and the news has to travel. Nothing says the reign started that morning. The singing starts when it becomes audible.

Three verses on, an invitation is issued in writing. Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. Whatever you can hear from where you are, thunder, water, or a room with three people and a piano, that invitation has been sent to you, and it is not conditional on your voice being any good.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 341 is Taken Up When Forsaken (Psalm 27:10).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two