# What Does Hosanna Mean in the Bible? “Save Us, We Pray” Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/hosanna-in-the-bible-what-does-it-really-mean/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2024-07-14 Updated: 2026-10-26 Hosanna means "save us, we pray". It comes from the Hebrew of Psalm 118:25, which the King James Version renders "Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD." When the crowds shouted it as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the old prayer for rescue became a cry of welcome and praise to the one who saves. So the word holds a whole story inside it. It begins as a plea from people who need help, and it ends as joy at the help that has come. Zechariah had promised that Jerusalem's king would come "lowly, and riding upon an ass," and "having salvation" (Zechariah 9:9). When he came, the people met him with the very word for it. Save us, they cried, to the one who had come to save. ## What does the word hosanna mean? Hosanna is a Hebrew prayer carried whole into the Greek of the Gospels. It joins two words: *yasha*, to save, deliver or rescue, and *na*, a small word of pleading that the King James translators render "I pray" or "I beseech thee." Strong's concordance gives the meaning as "oh save!" and calls it "an exclamation of adoration." Thayer's Greek lexicon explains that the Greek *hosanna* reproduces a shortened way of saying the Hebrew *hoshi'ah na*, and translates it "save, I pray." The Hebrew has no word for "us"; it is understood, since the people praying are the ones who need saving. The same root runs through the name of the one the crowds were greeting. Joshua in Hebrew is *Yehoshua*, from the name of the LORD and *yasha*, and the Greek form of that name is *Iesous*, Jesus. The angel told Joseph why he was to give the child that name: "thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Every hosanna on the road into Jerusalem was a prayer to a man whose name was its answer. The word itself appears six times in the New Testament, all of them on the day Jesus entered Jerusalem, on the road and in the Temple: Matthew 21:9 (twice) and 21:15, Mark 11:9 and 11:10, and John 12:13. ## Where does hosanna come from in the Old Testament? It comes from Psalm 118, the last of the psalms of praise that Jewish worship calls the Hallel and sang at the great pilgrim feasts. "Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD: O LORD, I beseech thee, send now prosperity," the psalm prays, and in the next breath, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: we have blessed you out of the house of the LORD" (Psalm 118:25–26). The crowds in the Gospels quote both lines. The prayer belonged most of all to the Feast of Tabernacles. The Law told Israel to take "branches of palm trees" and "willows of the brook" and to "rejoice before the LORD your God seven days" (Leviticus 23:40). The Mishnah, the Jewish law code written down around AD 200, remembers how the Temple kept that feast. The worshippers waved their branches at the words "Lord, please save us" when Psalm 118 was sung, and each day they walked around the altar saying, "Lord, please save us. Lord, please grant us success." On the seventh day they went round it seven times. The cry for salvation was sung with branches in the hand, at the feast God had commanded his people to keep with rejoicing. Jewish worship still keeps it. That seventh day of Sukkot is called Hoshana Rabbah, the Great Hosanna. As Sefaria describes it, "Today, the day is marked by customs such as seven processions around the synagogue sanctuary, extended recitation of prayers known as *hoshanot,* the striking of willow branches on the floor, and staying up at night to learn Torah." ## Why did the crowds shout hosanna on Palm Sunday? Because they believed the king had come. Matthew tells us that "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" (Matthew 21:9). Mark has them welcome "the kingdom of our father David" (Mark 11:10). John says they "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 12:13). The words of the psalm, and the [palm branches](https://christianpure.com/learn/palm-symbolism-bible/) of the old feast, were turned toward one man on a young donkey. Luke tells the same scene without the Hebrew word. His crowd cries, "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest" (Luke 19:38). When the Pharisees asked Jesus to quiet them, he said that "if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out" (Luke 19:40). The cry did not end on the road. In the Temple, children took it up: "Hosanna to the son of David," and the chief priests "were sore displeased." Jesus answered them with a psalm: "have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" (Matthew 21:15–16). John adds an honest line about the disciples themselves: "These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him" (John 12:16). The people shouted more than they knew. Within the week the same city would cry "Crucify him," and the King they had hailed would save them in a way none of them expected. More on that day is in [the significance of the triumphal entry](https://christianpure.com/learn/triumphal-entry-significance/). ## Is hosanna a cry for help or a word of praise? It is both. In the psalm it is a prayer for rescue. On Palm Sunday it is still a prayer, "save us," but it has become a shout of welcome to the Saviour standing in front of them. The lexicons hold the two together: Strong's gives "oh save!" and "an exclamation of adoration" in the same entry, and the Bible Hub Topical Lexicon writes, "Originally petitionary—‘O LORD, save us, we pray’—it gradually became both a plea and a triumphal shout." The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says the same in its own words: "the Hosanna, though supplicatory at first, became associated with rejoicing." That is how we pray it still. We ask God to save because we need him, and we praise him because he does. A child in the Temple did not need to understand the theology to pray it truly. ## Hosanna in the highest: what does it mean? "In the highest" means in the highest heavens, where God dwells and the angels praise him, and the phrase is read in two ways. The commentator Albert Barnes set them side by side: it "may mean either 'Hosanna in the highest, loftiest strains,' or it may be for a prayer to God 'Save now, O thou that dwellest in the highest heaven, or among the highest angels.'" In the first reading the cry is praise lifted as high as it can go, and heaven is asked to join it. Ellicott's commentary hears it that way: the crowd "claimed heaven as in accord with earth." In the second it is still a plea, addressed to the God who reigns above. The Spanish Mass puts it simply, *Hosanna en el cielo*, "Hosanna in heaven." Scripture gives both readings a home. At Jesus' birth the angels sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (Luke 2:14), and the psalm calls on heaven to join the praise: "praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, all his angels" (Psalm 148:1–2). Earth shouts on the road, and heaven is called to answer, as Luke's crowd puts it, with "peace in heaven, and glory in the highest." ## How do Christians use hosanna in worship today? Christians have prayed it from the very beginning. The Didache, an early manual of Christian prayer and church order that many scholars date before AD 100, gives a prayer of thanksgiving after the meal that ends: "Let grace come, and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God (Son) of David! If any one is holy, let him come; if any one is not so, let him repent. Maran atha. Amen." The bracket is the translator's. The Greek text, rediscovered in 1873, reads "God of David," as Thayer's lexicon notes, and the Catholic Encyclopedia renders it "Son of David," as the Gospels have it. Christians still sing it at the Lord's table, in the hymn called the Sanctus. In the Latin of the Roman Missal it reads, "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis." Catholics sing it in their own languages too; in Spanish it is *Hosanna en el cielo*. In the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, celebrant and people sing together, "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." Every time it is sung, the crowd on the road and the children in the Temple are given voice again. The Latter-day Saints keep the word in a rite of their own, the Hosanna Shout. Their church describes it as "a way for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to give honor and praise to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ," and as "a symbol of how the crowds reacted to Jesus during his triumphal entry into Jerusalem." President Russell M. Nelson says it "was first given in this dispensation at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple on March 27, 1836," when the congregation joined in shouting three times: "Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to God and the Lamb, Amen, Amen and Amen!" Since 1892 the shout has been given while waving a white handkerchief, and it is still given at the dedication of each new temple. ## How is hosanna different from hallelujah? Hosanna asks God to save. Hallelujah praises him. Hallelujah is Hebrew too, from *halal*, to praise, and *Yah*, the short form of the name of the LORD: "praise ye the LORD," the cry of the psalms (Psalm 113:1). In the New Testament it appears only in Revelation 19, as the song of heaven after God's victory. "Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God," sings the great multitude, and the elders fall down and worship, "saying, Amen; Alleluia" (Revelation 19:1, 4). So the two words stand at the two ends of the same story. Hosanna is sung on the way into Jerusalem, while the battle is still ahead. Hallelujah is sung when it is won. Both are ours. We say "save us" in the middle of our troubles, and we will say "praise the Lord" at the end of them. John saw where the cry ends. In his vision a multitude no one could count, "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," stood before the throne "clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." Palms are in their hands again, as on the road into Jerusalem, and the old plea for salvation has turned to thanksgiving for it: "Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9–10). --- ## Related reading - [What is the significance of the triumphal entry?](https://christianpure.com/learn/triumphal-entry-significance/) - [Palm Sunday: its meaning and biblical references](https://christianpure.com/learn/palm-sunday-its-meaning-significance-and-biblical-references/) - [What do palm branches mean in the Bible?](https://christianpure.com/learn/palm-symbolism-bible/) - [The difference between Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday](https://christianpure.com/learn/passion-sunday-vs-palm-sunday/) - [12 prayers for Palm Sunday](https://christianpure.com/learn/prayers-for-palm-sunday/) --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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