Music Monday: The Psalms
Tag: Psalms
Friday Frivolity: Keep it shut
Introduction to the psalms
Psalms is a book which I find more intriguing the more I study it. Here’s an article I recently came across which provides a great introduction to some of the structural aspects of this Old Testament hymnbook:
Selah?
A very quick post today. As I mentioned before, I’m trying to read through the Bible in a year. At the moment in the plan, each day I a section from Genesis, a psalm and a section from Matthew’s Gospel. As I’ve been reading the Psalms, I noticed a curious word occasionally interspersed within the text, “Selah”:
O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
many are saying of me,
there is no help for him in God. Selah
But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cry aloud to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy hill. Selah
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.
I am not afraid of ten thousands of people
who have set themselves against me round about. – Psalm 3:1-6
I wasn’t sure what this meant so I did a bit of googling…
It turns out that the exact meaning of “Selah” is somewhat disputed, but Wikipedia suggests that “It is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like “stop and listen”. Selah can also be used to indicate that there is to be a musical interlude at that point in the Psalm”
