The Diamond of Praise – Ruwa (Shout!)
A Facet of Praise: Ruwa! (Shout Joyfully).
“The area of ancient Israel’s greatest creativity, and so what they did best, was the praise of God.” (Ellen Davis, Getting involved with God). “I will extol Thee, my God, O King; And I will bless Thy name forever and ever. Every day I will bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name forever and ever. Great is the Lord Yahweh, and highly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts, the glorious splendor of Thy majesty, and on Thy wonderful works I will meditate.” (Psalm 145, a song of praise by David).
Scripture doesn’t define the word “praise,” but it offers plenty of descriptions. Praise can be described as an outward expression of gratitude for all that God has done for oneself, for the community, for the world. Praise is a recounting of the many blessings that God has provided in His grace and mercy. Praise is a grateful appreciation of God’s mighty works. Praise is an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord, an acknowledgement of God’s righteous deeds. To praise God is to thank God and celebrate His presence in the world.
Praise is what we were created to do, it is the chief of our ultimate satisfactions, and we won’t find personal fulfillment unless we develop the habit of forgetting ourselves and praising God. Most of us Christian believers are not following in the footsteps of our Jewish brethren and praising God with an inspired creativity. The fact is, the Hebrew Bible reveals a vocabulary of praise that will help us in our bid to be more expressive of our praise, more imaginative, more creative. The Hebrew Bible reveals praise to be a diamond with an almost uncountable number of facets. There are many words in Scripture that may translate as praise, but the reality is praise has an abundance of angles and facets and dimensions that we need to learn if we want to mature in our praise of God. The Hebrew language is loaded with words that contain the element of praise but with added qualities that expands our view of what praise could mean to us in our walk of faith. Knowing these words will help us to participate more fully and deeply in praising our God, in expressing our thanksgiving to Him in every way humanly possible. “Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim Thy praise (tehillah, see below).” (Psalm 51:15 )
Praising God involves all of us, not just our intellect to think with or our bottoms to sit on. Praise and worship in the Jewish tradition is a physical experience as well as spiritual, with lots of meaningful postures and gestures, singing, multisensory, thoughtful yet expressive. Praise and worship in the Hebrew Bible invariably incorporated music and melody and instrumentation. Praise is not a spectator sport, but one that asks for full participation. As Dwight Pryor once said, “Praise is not afraid of feelings, but they are not based on feelings. If praise were a train, the engine that needs to constantly be stoked is God-focus and self-forgetfulness, and the emotional feelings are basically the caboose… still a part of things, but not what’s running the train.”
Praise is our exhale of gratitude and devotion after our inhale of God’s inspired presence. God initiates, we respond. So praising God is like our respiratory system, and unless we are breathing in God and then breathing out praise, we will spiritually expire. If we don’t learn how to respond to God’s goodness with heartfelt praise, our faith will soon become lifeless. Consider this category of “The Diamond of Praise” in the blog to be my meager attempt to polish each facet on this sparkling diamond. Each Hebrew word in this expanded vocabulary of praise will convey a different aspect of praise, and is intended to help us be more creative in our praise, more expressive, and actually, more biblical.
“Make a joyful shout (ruwa) to God, all the peoples of the earth! Sing out loudly to the honor of His Name. Make His praise glorious! Say to God, ‘How awesome are your works! Through the greatness of your power, your enemies shall submit themselves to you. All the earth shall worship you and say praises to you! They shall sing praises to your Name!” (Ps. 66:1-4).
There are moments when fervently singing in worship that we become so filled with joy and thanksgiving that we feel like we are going to explode. What do we do then? When the ancient Jews felt like this, they were not embarrassed to do something in praise that most of us would never do: SHOUT! Look closely at the Psalms from beginning to end, and there was a lot of shouting going on. As the resident geniuses of praise, the Israelites were only to happy to include the option of shouting their praise, of making what the psalmists called a “joyful noise.”
Ruwa: a Hebrew word meaning… to shout joyfully; to make a joyful noise; literally, to split the ears with sound; to shout a victory cheer in honor of God; to cry aloud at the top of your lungs; to shout aloud in triumph; to make a loud noise of praise; to shout out a war cry before going into battle; to shout out in celebration of God’s goodness and blessing. A related Hebrew word of praise is Ranan, which means exactly the same thing as ruwa.
“Make a joyful shout (ruwa) to the Lord Yahweh, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come before His presence with singing, and acknowledge that the Lord, He is God!” (Psalm 100:1-2).
Ruwa is an important word in Jewish history, in addition to all the psalms. Ruwa was the operative word in God’s instructions to the Israelites as they engaged in their first battle in the Promised Land. “So the people shouted (ruwa) and the priests blew their trumpets; and it came about when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, that the people shouted (ruwa) with a great shout (ruwa), and the walls of Jericho fell down flat… and the people took the city.” (Joshua 6:20).
And who could forget the famous prophecy of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem? “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout (ruwa) in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9).
The joyful shout was a vital means of expression in the prophetic announcements of redemption in the coming of the messianic age as well:
“Shout (ruwa) for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout (ruwa) joyfully, you lower parts of the earth; break forth into a shout (ruwa) of joy, you mountains, O forests and every tree in them! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and in Israel He shows forth His glory!” (Isaiah 44:23).
“Shout (ruwa) for joy, O daughter of Zion! Shout (ruwa) in triumph, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! Yahweh has taken away His judgments against you, and He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; You will fear disaster no more.’ (Zephaniah 3:14-15).
If we were standing outside the doors of the ancient Temple during the height of worship, what would that have sounded like? I think it would be inspiring and hilarious and moving and poignant and ear-splitting, and all of it tremendously enjoyed by the Lord. I have a sense that the term “joyful noise” was often an accurate description. Won’t heaven be fascinating, with an amazing concoction of worship styles, complete with shouters in the midst! Jeremiah seemed to claim there will be a redemption of voice in the New Kingdom, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Yet again there shall be heard in this place… the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, ‘Give thanks to Yahweh-Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts! For the Lord is good, His lovingkindness and His mercy are everlasting.’” (Jeremiah 33:10-11).
There are probably going to be a few shouts in the mix somewhere when we praise God in the New Jerusalem. Joyful noise redeemed.