What does “Selah” mean?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. As you know, we’re in our series in the Psalms, studying when and how to pray. In this last week, in the Psalm that we studied, uh, there was a word that appeared once, uh, “Selah” or “Sela”. And that is not the only time that word appears in scripture.

In fact, it appears 71 times in the Psalms, and it appears in Habakkuk as well. Uh, anytime it appears, it is not translated. Uh, it appears, um, and well, transliterated from the original Hebrew. They don’t put the Hebrew letters there. They take the Hebrew letters and write with English letters what it sounds like in Hebrew. Um, and so the question is, what does this word mean?

Why isn’t it translated? Uh, and what are we supposed to do with it? Uh, there’s actually a long tradition of trying to decipher the meaning of this word, uh, even back to pre-Christian days in rabbinic literature. Um, they discussed what this means. And so there’s several options. Um, one is a pause in the text. You’re reading, you see this, let’s pause.

Another, because the Psalms, uh, were so often sung, um, that it’s, uh, an indication to make the music louder. Um, another possibility is that, uh, the the the word Selah is a synonym, um, or sounds like the Hebrew word for forever. Um, so if we take all these things into consideration, perhaps, um, the best thing we can do is when we can come to that is pause and reflect on what we just read. Um, since it’s a word that doesn’t have a direct meaning, it might be a sound similar to when you see

something that is really meaningful to you. It could be, uh, you’re reading scripture, it could be you see a scene in a movie and it resonates with your heart and you say, um, yeah. What does that mean? When you make that noise of agreement, um, it, how would you translate it? Uh, it is a pause, that’s true.

It even kind of means forever. You see something that’s true and you’re like, yes, that is how it is. And you’re reflecting back on forever and ever that will be true. So it can mean forever. That’s a, okay, translation. It’s just yes. It’s agreement. It’s reflection. It’s acceptance. It’s like a thankfulness that you’ve seen this, that it has resonated with you.

It’s all of those things. It’s it’s a kind of guttural noise that points us back to what we just read. Um, and so that those appear so often in the text, and these are prayers, uh, and many times actual songs. Uh, we do those kind of things naturally, and they’re good to do. You don’t always have to just plow forward, uh, with more information and more information, and I got to know more, and I got to know more.

It’s really good to stop and just reflect, pause, agree, let it resonate with you. Um, so when we see those in the text or even when we don’t, it’s good, uh, for us to say, Selah. Forever that is true. I agree. It resonates with me. Uh, so we hope that’s helpful. And we’ll see you next time.