{"id":20912,"date":"2017-01-22T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T11:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20912"},"modified":"2017-01-22T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T11:24:07","slug":"word-of-the-day-selah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=20912","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day: Selah"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the relevant Wikipedia page<\/a>, Selah<\/em> is a word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible – 71 times in the Psalms and three times in Habakkuk. The meaning of the word is not known, but it is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like “stop and listen.” It can also be interpreted as a form of underlining in preparation for the next paragraph.<\/p>\n

At least some of the Psalms were sung accompanied by musical instruments and there are references to this in many chapters. Thirty-one of the thirty-nine psalms with the caption “To the choir-master” include the word selah<\/i>. So Selah<\/i> may indicate a break in the song whose purpose is similar to that of Amen (Hebrew: “so be it”) in that it stresses the truth and importance of the preceding passage. Alternatively, selah<\/i> may mean “forever,” as it does in some places in the liturgy (notably the second to last blessing of the Amidah. Still another interpretation claims that selah<\/i> comes from the primary Hebrew root word salah<\/i> which means “to hang,” and by implication to measure (weigh).<\/p>\n

I came across this word for the first time when I bought the new CD by Emili Sande called “Long Live The Angels” and found that the opening track is called ‘Selah’. You can read the words here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"