Selah! A Puzzle

by R. Darke, Victoria, B.C., Canada | Category: General | Feb 1988

It is difficult sometimes to confirm long-standing meanings given to some Bible words. One example is selah used over 70 times in the Psalms. The word is first used in Scripture as the name of a town. The Hebrew word selah is said by many scholars to mean a rock, a crag, and it is thought that the town was later re-named Petra. Where, then, does pause and consider, said to be the meaning of selah, come into all this?

"This curious word", as one scholar describes selah, "must apparently remain for ever what it bas been ever since the first translation of the Bible was made - the puzzle of ordinary readers, and the despair of scholars"

(Ellicott). Another comments: "Selah is said to mean a pause. Some take it as a direction to the singers to raise their voices" (Darby). Prof. F. Bruce speaks of it as a musical sign. "The Septuagint renders the word by diapsalma, which probably denotes the playing of musical instruments during a pause in the singing". Finally, this quote regarding higgaion selah (Psalm 9:16): "By Tholuck and Hengenstenberg, however, the two words are rendered meditation, pause; i.e. let the singer meditate while the music stops" (Kitto's Cyclopoedia).

So there. If the word Selah is a puzzle to some of us, we might find the solution if we pause and consider!

R. Darke, Victoria, B.C., Canada | Feb 1988
General