Read this interesting interpretation of Handel's Messiah as a glorious response to deism and Jewish unbelief in 1700s England. Read into the Hallelujah Chorus a lenten celebration of Christ's justice in using Rome to "dash [Jerusalem] to pieces like pottery" (Ps. 2), foreshadowing his ultimate judgment of all the nations and his universal, omnipotent reign. Of course, the actual words of the Hallelujah Chorus come out of Revelation 19 etc., celebrating the ruin of Babylon and the bloody defeat of all the nations that rebelled against the Kingdom of God. Can we then stand up and wear it like a badge, sing it like a madrigal until we hear the chorus swell... and still weep for the Jews like Jesus did?
Is God's justice on the dead even a motivation and tool for witnessing to the living?
Michael Marissen, New York Times, Unsettling History of That Joyous ‘Hallelujah’ April 8, 2007
HT: Jonathan Edwards, History of the Work of Redemption, for mentioning Richard Kidder's Demonstration of the Messias, which the libretto for Handel's Messiah was based on.
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