Note: This is a repost, by request, of a post originally published on June 27, 2007. (If you need to know why it disappeared in the first place, please read about the “Secret origins of the Higgaion reboot.”)
In a recent June 27, 2007 post, Rick Brannan expressed a desire to read what John Hobbins, Tyler Williams, and I might have to say about the somewhat mysterious word סלה selah, which appears some 71 times in the psalms, plus three more occurrences in Habakkuk 3. I do not pretend to any special knowledge about this word, but in keeping with Rick’s request, I will share some observations.
The great medieval Jewish poet and apologist Judah Halevi (c. 1075–1141) wrote the following poem sometime after AD 1099.