Hosanna: The Cry That Became Praise
The crowds on Palm Sunday were not inventing a slogan. They were quoting a psalm. Hosanna is what Psalm 118 sounds like when a whole city sings it at once: a cry for salvation aimed, that day, at the man riding in on a donkey.
interjection (from Hebrew).
Hosanna comes from the Hebrew hoshia na, “save, now.” It began as a plea for rescue and became an acclamation shouted to the One who saves.
In Psalm 118:25 the words “Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord” are, in Hebrew, hoshia na. Pilgrims sang that psalm going up to Jerusalem for the feasts, and over time the plea hardened into an acclamation, the way a cry can become a cheer. By the first century, shouting hosanna to someone meant hailing them as the one through whom God saves.
That is what makes Palm Sunday so striking. The crowd shouted a prayer at Jesus, and He accepted it. Hosanna holds need and praise together in one word: you can shout it in worship and mean it from the bottom of your need at the same time. Many prayers begin exactly there.
Key verses
“Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord: we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord.”
The source of the word: save now, hoshia na, sung by pilgrims for centuries before Palm Sunday.
“And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.”
The crowds apply the psalm to Jesus directly, spreading the road with branches as for a king.
“And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.”
Mark records the shout reaching upward: hosanna in the highest. The plea has become worship.
“Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
John names the title the crowd meant by it: the King of Israel, coming in the name of the Lord.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (KJV), public domain.
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