Have you ever seen something so beautiful, it left you breathless?

We're going to talk about the Hebrew word, Selah.

Thankfully, there is a short answer to what does Selah mean.

Unfortunately, it is this.

We don't really know.

But there are clues.

The word, Selah, in our English Bibles, is a transliteration of a Hebrew word.

As we saw in the simply put episodes about hallelujah and amen, we sometimes use transliterations

when there's no equivalent word in the English language.

Write down the sound of the Hebrew word, Sayla, using the closest equivalent letters we have in the English alphabet,

and that's how you end up with S-E-L-A-H.

Say-la. The wordA-H. Say la.

The word appears no fewer than 71 times in 39 of the Old Testament Psalms.

It also appears three times in Habakkuk, Chapter 3.

The Book of Psalms, of course, is the Bible's songbook.

These are words which are intended to be set to music and then

sung or recited, which is why many scholars have speculated that Selah is some kind of

musical notation or direction. Some have argued that the word appears to mark a change or interruption of some kind in the singing or reciting of the Psalms, and this perhaps is where we approach the most likely meaning of the word.

Look up, Sayla, in a Hebrew dictionary, and it'll likely say the word means to lift up or exalt.

So the speculation is that Selah is the moment when the musicians, singers, and assembled

crowd would respond to what they've been singing with praise and exaltation. As it says in Psalm 66, verse 4,

all the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name, Selah,

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