Lets brake it down; kumba means;come by here, Yah is short Yahweh…! So you are oonly asking that YAHWEH , Creator of to come and bless you. And the AllaluYah means praise ye YAHWEH. And I would have to agree with it being an African term. Not to put you down Mr. Cecil it’s not just the whole truth but the Holy Truth. And until we give Honor Praise And Glory to Yah’s Holy name we canot be share in the covenat. I pray for my nation’s people to embrace the truth and let tradition pass. I’v said before and i’ll say this until the day i die. I would much rather die in the truth than to live a lie. And all praise be onto YAHWEH !..
(at this time i have other fish to fry)
It’s usually considered helpful to include a link to the Master’s column, so that we know what’s going on, and we can tell you from the usual drive-by crazy who posts here once and never comes back.
[ What does “kumbaya” mean? - The Straight Dope ]
Also, welcome to the Dope. Enjoy your fish.
As a small aside, would you happen to be Catholic(frying fish on Friday and all that)?
This explanation as to the origin of “Kumbayah”-do you have an outside source for for it, or was it divinely inspired?
Anecdotal: It’s what I was told in the Sixties when “Kumbayah” was de rigeuer for wholesome teen-age fun on a Friday night.
Now I’m sittin’ cross-legged, shoulder-to-shoulder around the campfire a-swayin’ to the droning hum and thinking things are all gonna be okay if we can just hold hands.
Did they lie to us? I wanna know where my fish is.
That’s very close to Cecil’s explanation, but the yah = Yahweh part doesn’t make sense. Kum = come, bay = by, yah = here. The Yahweh version interprets bay as “by here” even though there isn’t a trace of the word “here” in that syllable. That just doesn’t work.
“Oh, Lord, come by Yahweh.”
“Oh, Lord, come by here, Yahweh.”
A bit redundant.
Um, right.*
*That’s the politest way I can put what I’m thinking. Rest truncated because really this thread belongs in GD for witnessing.
Really? Then how about you start by posting proof of the existence of a god of any kind?
We’ll wait…
And “Yahweh” was largely the exclusive property of Bible scholars at that date (as well as atheists using it as an excuse to sneer).
I really shouldn’t have said that, so deleted…