Sunday, March 24, 2024

Selah, Crag, Exaltation

Interspersed throughout the psalms is a strange word, selah, usually untranslated. (My version of the NIV does the disservice of dropping the word completely!) Some translate the word as "crag", an outcropping of rock.  The Strong's concordance reference I cite above translates the word as "to lift up, exalt." (The online Blue Letter Bible article on selah is here. The Hebrew letters, above, are from that website.)

Sarah E. Fisher, in her blog Hebrew Word Lessons explores that word in a beautiful blogpost here, focusing on a beloved newborn child given the name Selah Grace. (Yes, there is a long tradition of giving the name Selah to newborn girls.)

Almost surely selah is some type of musical instruction. It may represent a musical interlude (some of the psalms naturally seem to pause at that word) or it may be an instruction to transition the song to some type of musical buildup or difference in tone.

One attempt to explain selah is from BibleStudyTools.com is the online article What Does Selah Mean in the Bible? In that article is the following:

"When used as a noun, selah refers to a “cliff or crag.” In verb form, though, it means to “lift up, exalt” – a fitting definition for both the soring [sic] cliffs of Petra and the omnipotent God of Psalms."

In Caroline Cobb's hymns from the psalms, there is one called "Selah." It is, indeed, a musical interlude. Here is the Spotify link to that piece.

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