Hoshi’ana

Sunday before last I sat listening to a pastor talk about his walk with the Lord and marveled over the many ways our experiences were similar.

We both came to the Lord as children in Baptist churches, then in the same year - 1982 - both of us entered into another experience that radically changed our walk. As he put it, ‘I can’t explain what happened; all I know is, "I was blind and now I see."

That’s what happened to me, too, when I was introduced to the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:2). The Word of God came alive to me. Suddenly I could actually understand what I was reading!

I had to laugh listening to this pastor’s story because we also shared the experience of having difficulty receiving our prayer language – praying in the Spirit, or praying in other tongues. He said it took him about six months after receiving the baptism of the Spirit before his prayer language finally broke through.

For me it was more like three months, but I was just as perplexed and frustrated as it sounds like he was. We were both open to receiving and really, as Baptists we had never even been taught against speaking in tongues, so we didn’t have to battle through any preconceived notions. Like him – and he was a pastor’s son – we just had never heard about praying in the Spirit or “tongues” at all.

Like him, I really wanted my prayer language, but it didn’t matter how many times people prayed for us, there was something going on that just blocked that release. He speculated that maybe it was his logical male thinking processes that blocked the flow, because he liked to have everything figured out mentally. Maybe. I can certainly relate to that approach to things in my life too.

Whatever it was that blocked the flow, it certainly wasn’t anything I did when my prayer language finally began to flow. I remember distinctly sitting at the drawing board in my bedroom doing some art project while listening to a praise tape when suddenly my prayer language just bubbled up within me and poured out of my mouth. It was a language I didn’t know and words I'd never heard. My prayer language came pouring out when I wasn’t even thinking about it and - WOW! - I was so excited. It was joy unspeakable.

This Saturday I attended Shabbat worship at a local Messianic Jewish congregation. It was my first time to attend their worship services but we sang the familiar songs of worship to the Lord that I have enjoyed over the past almost two decades in the Messianic Jewish movement.

I am always moved by the reverence of Messianic worship; it is a holy reverence. Very pure.

We began to sing a song, Holy, which I have since found out was composed by Christian inspirational composer Grayson Warren Brown, which goes,

“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hoshi'ana! Hoshi'ana! In the highest.”

In Messianic circles, we sing the Hebrew “Hoshi’ana” instead of the transliteration “Hosanna” found in the passage of Matthew 21 that this wonderful praise hymn is based on.

As we were singing the chorus above, that’s when I remembered that when I got in my prayer language back in 1982, in the first string of words that was the word “Hoshiana”.

I remember it so clearly because I was so excited about finally receiving my prayer language that I immediately wrote down the words phonetically, "So I wouldn’t forget them." I had no idea that the word was a Hebrew word or what it meant, only that it was a beautiful word to my ears – like the word “ocean” only, o-she-ana.

It was many years later before I realized it was a Hebrew word, and it is not until now that realize there was surely significance to this being a first word in my prayer language. It is the only word in that first string of words in my prayer language that I can remember 27 years later. It is still a word that bubbles forth at times when I am speaking in my prayer language.

In the Hebrew “hoshi a na” means “save us!” – it is a salvation that is understood to come through the Messiah. In Psalm 118, a prayer that is recited on the last day of the Feast of Sukkot (The Feast of Tabernacles - a feast in part that is symbolic of the indwelling of the Spirit in the Body of Messiah), "hoshi'ana" is the cry of Israel for the promised Messiah to deliver them, to fulfill salvation for them as a nation.

Psalm 118: 25-26
(Hoshi’ana) Save now, I pray, O LORD;
O LORD, I pray, send now prosperity.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!
We have blessed you from the house of the LORD.

Notice that the same words follow (“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”) that the crowd proclaimed to Jesus in what is known as His “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem:

Matthew 21:5 “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”
6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, 7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.
8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. 9 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.
10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? 11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

Isaiah 21:11 and Zechariah 9:9 are prophecies that were fulfilled in the exact words of the cries of the multitudes as Yeshua entered Jerusalem before His last Passover.

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Surely your salvation (yesha) is coming; Isaiah 62:11

Even His name - Yeshua - is based on the Hebrew root word, yesha, which means "salvation." Isaiah refers to the Messiah as "salvation" and Zechariah refers to Him as Israel's "king."

Zechariah prophesies, (9:9)
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.

Just before He ascended into heaven before the very eyes of his disciples they asked Him, Acts 1:6-8,

“Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Some have found fault with the disciples asking Jesus when he would restore the kingdom to Israel as if it were an inappropriate question, but the truth is this was a perfectly appropriate expectation for His Jewish disciples to have. For their expectation was for the promise, for Israel’s hope in the LORD. It was the Messianic expectation of the Son of David who would be Israel’s deliverer and salvation.

Jesus did not rebuke them for expecting the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, answering them that the timing or season for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel was not for them to know but was the Father’s business. But their business was to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to become witnesses for Him.

In Matthew 23:37, Yeshua speaks to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover,

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’”

In this statement Jesus is saying that there is a time when Israel, in numbers large enough to be considered a corporate cry, will say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” It will mark the official season that the Father will “restore the kingdom to Israel.”


This is what we are all pressing into, the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven and Jesus is saying that Israel will surely be included in that kingdom. It is the reason Isaiah 62 is a prophecy so close to the heart of every Messianic Jew and every Christian whom God has stirred with heart for the Jewish people to come to the knowledge of their own Messiah.

Isaiah 62
1 For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burns.
2 The Gentiles shall see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory.
You shall be called by a new name,
Which the mouth of the LORD will name.
3 You shall also be a crown of glory
In the hand of the LORD,
And a royal diadem
In the hand of your God.
4 You shall no longer be termed Forsaken,
Nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate;
But you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah;
For the LORD delights in you,
And your land shall be married.
5 For as a young man marries a virgin,
So shall your sons marry you;
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
So shall your God rejoice over you.
6 I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
They shall never hold their peace day or night.
You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent,
7 And give Him no rest till He establishes
And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
8 The LORD has sworn by His right hand
And by the arm of His strength:
“Surely I will no longer give your grain
As food for your enemies;
And the sons of the foreigner shall not drink your new wine,
For which you have labored.
9 But those who have gathered it shall eat it,
And praise the LORD;
Those who have brought it together shall drink it in My holy courts.”
10 Go through,
Go through the gates!
Prepare the way for the people;
Build up,
Build up the highway!
Take out the stones,
Lift up a banner for the peoples!
11 Indeed the LORD has proclaimed
To the end of the world:
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Surely your salvation is coming;
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His work before Him.’”
12 And they shall call them The Holy People,
The Redeemed of the LORD;
And you shall be called Sought Out,
A City Not Forsaken.