The Hippopotamus Song

I mentioned previously my hope that students would broaden my horizons. That happened during the last class period, as we focused on songs for children. Students shared songs they knew of which I already knew, such as “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” and “This Little Light of Mine.”

But they also shared “The Hippopotamus Song,” otherwise known as “Hip Hip Hooray (Hippopotamus).”

The song actually turned out to be simply fantastic as a way of talking about the topic that I wanted us to focus on, namely the relationship between such songs and the Biblical text(s) that they relate to.

This song begins precisely as Genesis does, but then varies the order, which provided a chance to talk about the reasons for the order in Genesis 1 and parallels between days 1-3 and 4-6. It mentions God’s fingerprints in a way that is closer to Genesis 2 than to Genesis 1, providing an opportunity to talk about the differences between the two. The placement of the sky on top provided an opportunity to talk about the dome and ancient vs. modern cosmology.

And of course, we talked about whether the Bible mentions hippopotamuses, which meant a chance to talk about behemoth and Bible translation.