Church bulletin:
Anyone familiar with the psalms will have encountered the word “selah.” In some psalms it appears quite frequently. Psalm 3:1-4; 8, “A Psalm of David When He Fled from Absalom His Son. LORD, how they have increased who trouble me! Many are they who rise up against me. (2) Many are they who say of me, “There is no help for him in God.” Selah (3) But You, O LORD, are a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head. (4) I cried to the LORD with my voice, And He heard me from His holy hill. Selah……V8, “Salvation belongs to the LORD. Your blessing is upon Your people. Selah”
In other psalms it appears only once. Using the NKJV, selah is found in 71 verses of the psalms and it occurs on three occasions in Habakkuk. Other versions have it recorded once in Isaiah and once in Jeremiah. With good reason we associate it with the psalter. It raises some important and obvious questions – what does the word mean? why does it feature almost exclusively the psalms? How should we respond to selah as we read?
The meaning of Selah. The exact meaning of the word is unclear. The general idea is to pause or suspend. When reading through a particular psalm and the word selah appears, suspend the reading, pause for a moment. It is very easy to plough along without giving due thought to what is before us. At various points the psalmist wants us to put the brakes on. Some scholars believe that selah involves giving praise to God. Strengthening this belief is the fact that selah is often found in the psalms where the context is praise and adoration (there are exceptions). These two points come together – pause in order to give praise, adoration and thanksgiving to God.
Selah in the psalms. The psalms are poems, and, for the most part, they are experiential. They express the joys, frustrations, comforts, fears, hopes etc. of those who walk with the Lord in this fallen world. Being experiential in nature, it is to be expected that worship would feature heavily. This is not to say that worship doesn’t occur elsewhere in the Bible, of course it does. But in the psalms, it has a specific focus. As such the psalms teach us to be people of prayer. In all of life’s ups and downs we are to lift up our voices to God in praise as well as bring our needs and confessions.
Responding to selah. With the following thoughts in mind, selah is not merely a word we read. Selah is something we do. We are to pause, reflect upon what we have read, think about it in our own context not just that of the psalmist. It would be rather superfluous to read about the prayers of the psalmist if we do not join in with our own prayers. Selah emphasises that the psalms (and not only the psalms) are more than words on paper. They draw us to God. They draw out of us the worship of which our Lord is worthy.
Selah is a word which belongs to the psalter, but the practice should not be limited to our reading of the psalter. The apostle Paul frequently pauses in his letters to offer to God the worship of his heart. Eph 3:20-21, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, (21) to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
We should pause often as we read through God’s Word in order reflect upon truth; in order to think about God’s gracious dealings with us – His love, forgiveness, provision, protection etc. We in turn lift up our hearts and voices to Him. If this is not our regular practice, may the Lord convict and strengthen us that it would be so.