Selah - American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

A musical term which occurs seventy-three times in the Psalms, and is found also in ,9,13 . It usually occurs at the end of a period or apostrophe, but sometimes at the end only of a clause. This difficult word, it is now generally believed, was a direction for a meditative pause in the singing of a psalm, during which perhaps there was an instrumental interlude.\par

Selah - Condensed Biblical Cyclopedia

A word appearing in Psalms and

Habakkuk that was apparently an instruction

for the singers or musicians, perhaps

meaning to pause or to get louder.

Selah - Faussets Bible Dictionary

Seventy-one times in the Psalms, three times in Habakkuk. From shelah, *rest.* A music mark denoting a pause, during which the singers ceased to sing and only the instruments were heard. Septuagint diapsalma, a break in the psalm introduced where the sense requires a rest. It is a call to calm reflection on the preceding words. Hence, in Psa 9:16 it follows eeiggaion, *meditation.* The selah reminds us that the psalm requires a peaceful and meditative soul which can apprehend what the Holy Spirit propounds. Thus it is most suggestive, and far from being, as Smith's Bible Dictionary alleges of this sense, *superfluous.* Delitsseh takes it from saalal *to lift up,* a musical forte, the piano singing then ceasing, and the instruments alone playing with execution an interlude after sentences of peculiar importance, so as to emphasize them.

Selah - Hawker Poor Man Commentary Dictionary

This is a pure Hebrew word, and written exactly as it is here. The translators of the Bible have thought proper to preserve, entire as they found it. We find it scattered up and down in the book of the Psalms no less than seventy times; sometimes several times in one Psalm, and in many of the Psalms not at all. It is three times also in this third chapter of Habakkuk, and no where else that I remember in all the Scripture.

It would furnish matter for a separate treatise to bring into one view all that hath been said upon this word Selah; and after all we should be still left to conjecture. Some ancient writers have considered it as a word of particular observation, as if Selah meant to tell the reader to pause, said consider what went before. But this opinion is liable to great objection; for in this case David and Habakkuk are the only writers that thus impress consideration on their Readers, and they that always, neither at what we should consider themost striking parts of their writings: and if this were indeed the sense of Selah, how comes it that not one of the Lord's servants have ever used?

Others, and that a great majority of writers on Scripture, have concluded that the word Selah had reference to the music in the temple - service, and was a note of the ancient psalmody, but which now and for a long time, hath lost its use. This opinion doth not seem more satisfactory than the former; for supposing this to be the case, it were unaccountable that the Holy Ghost should have uniformly watched the word so as to preserve it with equal care as the Scriptures themselves with which the word is connected.

One class more have concluded that the word Selah means an end, not unlike the Amen. And though there might seem an objection to this, in that the word is more frequently found in the middle part of the psalm or hymn, and not at the last verse, yet, say they, the sense of that part ends there. I humbly conceive that this explanation, though in part it may be right, yet is not wholly so. If the word Selah means the end, perhaps it may be found not to mean the end of the Psalm where it stands, but to a higher end, evenpointing to him who is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, and to whom the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, all refer as the end. (Luke 24. 44.) He is the great end, no doubt, as well as the beginning, in his mediatorial character, of all the creation of God, the Amen, and the faithful witness of heaven. (.) But here I leave the subject. I am persuaded the word Selah is important; and I am inclined to thin, like some other words preserved to us in the Psalms that itrefersto Christ. If the reader wishes to look at theses other words, let him turn to the word Musician.

Selah - Hitchcocks New and Complete Dictionary of the Holy Bible

the end; a pause

Selah - Kitto, John - Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Selah, word

Se´lah [PSALMS, BOOK OF]

Selah, place

Fig. 314—Petra, from above the Amphitheater

Se´lah, or rather Sela (rock); Gr. Petra, which has the same signification as Selah, the metropolis of the Edomites in Mount Seir. In the Jewish history it is recorded that Amaziah, king of Judah, 'slew of Edom in the valley of Salt ten thousand, and took Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day' (). This name seems however to have passed away with the Hebrew rule over Edom, for no further trace of it is to be found; and it is still called Selah by Isaiah (). These are all the certain notices of the place in Scripture. Mention is made of it by Strabo, Pliny, and other ancient writers; but from A.D. 536, down to the present century, not the slightest notice of the city is to be found in any quarter; and as no trace of it as an inhabited site is to be met with in the Arabian writers, the probability seems to be that it was destroyed in some unrecorded incursion of the desert hordes, and was afterwards left unpeopled. It was identified by Burckhardt in 1812 as the ancient capital of Arabia Petraea; and since that time has been visited by various travelers, who have given a minute description of its present condition.

The ruined city lies in a narrow valley, surrounded by lofty, and, for the most part, perfectly precipitous mountains. Those which form its southern limit are not so steep as to be impassable; and it is over these, or rather through them, along an abrupt and difficult ravine, that travelers from Sinai or Egypt usually wind their laborious way into the scene of magnificent desolation. The ancient and more interesting entrance is on the eastern side, through the deep narrow gorge of Wady Syke. The boundaries of the city are marked with perfect distinctness by the precipitous mountains by which the site is encompassed; and they give an extent of more than a mile in length, nearly from north to south, by a variable breadth of about half a mile. The sides of the valley are walled up by perpendicular rocks, from four hundred to six or seven hundred feet high. The northern and southern barriers are neither so lofty nor so steep, and they both admit of the passage of camels.

The chief public buildings occupied the banks of the river and the high ground farther south, as their ruins sufficiently show. One sumptuous edifice, which seems to have been a palace, remains standing, though in an imperfect and dilapidated state. It is an imposing ruin, though not of the purest style of architecture, and is the only constructed edifice now standing in Petra.

In various other parts of the valley are piles of ruins—columns and hewn stones—parts no doubt of important public buildings, which indicate the great wealth and magnificence of this ancient capital, as well as its unparalleled calamities. A large surface on the north side of the river is covered with substructions, which probably belonged to private habitations.

The mountain torrents which, at times, sweep over the lower parts of the ancient site, have undermined many foundations, and carried away many a chiseled stone, and worn many a finished specimen of sculpture into unshapely masses. The soft texture of the rock seconds the destructive agencies of the elements. Even the accumulations of rubbish, which mark the site of all other decayed cities, have mostly disappeared; and the extent which was covered with human habitations can only be determined by the broken pottery scattered over the surface, or mingled with the sand—the universal, and, it would seem, an imperishable memorial of popular cities that exist no longer.

Fig. 315—Interior of a tomb

The attention of travelers has however been chiefly engaged by the excavations which, having more successfully resisted the ravages of time, constitute at present the great and peculiar attraction of the place. These excavations, whether formed for temples, tombs, or the dwellings of living men, surprise the visitor by their incredible number and extent. They not only occupy the front of the entire mountain by which the valley is encompassed, but of the numerous ravines and recesses, which radiate on all sides from this enclosed area. Were these excavations, instead of following all the sinuosities of the mountain and its numerous gorges, ranged in regular order, they probably would form a street not less than five or six miles in length. By far the largest number were manifestly designed as places for the interment of the dead; and thus exhibit a variety in form and size, of interior arrangement and external decorations, adapted to the different fortunes of their occupants. Some of them are plain and unadorned, but there is a vast number of excavations enriched with various architectural ornaments. The interior of these unique and sumptuous monuments is quite plain and destitute of all decoration, but the exteriors exhibit some of the most beautiful and imposing results of ancient taste and skill which have remained to our times. The front of the mountain is wrought into facades of splendid temples, rivaling in their aspect and symmetry the most celebrated monuments of Grecian art. Columns of various orders, graceful pediments, broad rich entablatures, and sometimes statuary all hewn out of the solid rock, and still forming part of the native mass, transform the base of the mountain into a vast splendid pile of architecture, while the overhanging cliffs, towering above in shapes as rugged and wild as any on which the eye ever rested, form the most striking and curious of contrasts.

But nothing contributes so much to the almost magical effect of some of these monuments, as the rich and various colors of the rock out of which, or more properly in which, they are formed. Red, purple, yellow, azure or sky blue, black and white, are seen in the same mass distinctly in successive layers, or blended so as to form every shade and hue of which they are capable—as brilliant and as soft as they ever appear in flowers, or in the plumage of birds, or in the sky when illuminated by the most glorious sunset. It is more easy to imagine than describe the effect of tall, graceful columns, exhibiting these exquisite colors in their succession of regular horizontal strata.

Selah - Orthodox Jewish Bible Glossary

Petra

Selah - Smiths Bible Dictionary

Se'lah. This word, which is found only in the poetical books of the Old Testament, occurs seventy-one times in the Psalms, and three times in Habakkuk. It is probably a term which had a meaning in the musical nomenclature of the Hebrews, though what that meaning may have been is now a matter of pure conjecture. (Gesenius and Ewald and others think it has much the same meaning as our interlude, a pause in the voices singing, while the instruments perform alone. -- Editor)

Selah - The Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary

This is a pure Hebrew word, and written exactly as it is here. The translators of the Bible have thought proper to preserve, entire as they found it. We find it scattered up and down in the book of the Psalms no less than seventy times; sometimes several times in one Psalm, and in many of the Psalms not at all. It is three times also in this third chapter of Habakkuk, and no where else that I remember in all the Scripture.

It would furnish matter for a separate treatise to bring into one view all that hath been said upon this word Selah; and after all we should be still left to conjecture. Some ancient writers have considered it as a word of particular observation, as if Selah meant to tell the reader to pause, said consider what went before. But this opinion is liable to great objection; for in this case David and Habakkuk are the only writers that thus impress consideration on their Readers, and they that always, neither at what we should consider the most striking parts of their writings: and if this were indeed the sense of Selah, how comes it that not one of the Lord's servants have ever used?

Others, and that a great majority of writers on Scripture, have concluded that the word Selah had reference to the music in the temple-service, and was a note of the ancient psalmody, but which now and for a long time, hath lost its use. This opinion doth not seem more satisfactory than the former; for supposing this to be the case, it were unaccountable that the Holy Ghost should have uniformly watched the word so as to preserve it with equal care as the Scriptures themselves with which the word is connected.

One class more have concluded that the word Selah means an end, not unlike the Amen. And though there might seem an objection to this, in that the word is more frequently found in the middle part of the psalm or hymn, and not at the last verse, yet, say they, the sense of that part ends there. I humbly conceive that this explanation, though in part it may be right, yet is not wholly so. If the word Selah means the end, perhaps it may be found not to mean the end of the Psalm where it stands, but to a higher end, even pointing to him who is *the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth,* and to whom the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, all refer as the end. (Luk 24:44) He is the great end, no doubt, as well as the beginning, in his mediatorial character, of all the creation of God, the Amen, and the faithful witness of heaven. (Rev 3:14) But here I leave the subject. I am persuaded the word Selah is important; and I am inclined to thin, like some other words preserved to us in the Psalms that it refers to Christ. If the reader wishes to look at these other words, let him turn to the word Musician.

Selah - Watson, Richard - Biblical and Theological Dictionary

This expression is found in the Psalms seventy-four times, and thrice in the Prophet Habakkuk. The interpreters Symmachus and Theodotion generally translate selah by diapsalma, which signifies “a rest” or “pause” in singing. Jerom and Aquila translate it “for ever.” Some moderns pretend that selah has no signification, and that it is only a note of the ancient music, whose use is no longer known; and, indeed, selah may be taken away from all the places where it is found without interrupting the sense of the psalm. Calmet says it intimates the end, or a pause, and that is its proper signification; but as it is not always found at the conclusion of the sense, or of the psalm or song, so it is highly probable the ancient musicians put selah in the margin of their psalters, to show where a musical pause was to be made, or where the tune ended.

Selah - Webster-1913

(n.) A word of doubtful meaning, occuring frequently in the Psalms; by some, supposed to signify silence or a pause in the musical performance of the song.