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The majority of Bible-readers Think the word of my text of no importance. They suppose it to be a superfluity, a mere filling-in, a meaningless interjection, a useless refrain, an indefinable echo. Selah! It is never a Scriptural accident. Seventy-four times does it appear in the Psalms, and three times in Habakkuk. You must not convict this book of seventy-seven trivialities. Selah! It is an enthroned word. If, according to an old author, there are words that are battles, this word is a Marathon, a Thermopylae, a Waterloo, a Sedan. It is a word decisive sometimes for solemnity, and sometimes for beauty, and sometimes for grandeur. Through it roll the thundering chariots of the omnipotent God.

I. THE SELAH OF POETIC SIGNIFICANCE. When you find this word you are to rouse yourself to great stanzas. You are to open the door of your soul for analogies. You are to spread the wings of your imagination for flight. "I answered thee in the secret place of thunder; I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah! The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. I bear up the pillars thereof. Selah!... Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory. Selah! Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah! Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah!" The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah! Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah! I will trust in the covert of Thy wings. Selah! O God, when Thou wentest forth before Thy people, when Thou didst march through the wilderness. Selah!" You see the text is a signal hung out to warn you off the track while the rushing train goes by with its imperial messengers. Poetic word, charged with resurrections and millenniums!

II. THE SELAH OF INTERMISSION. Gesenius, Tholuck and Hengstenberg agreed that this word often means a rest in the music. According to the Greeks it is a diapsalma, a pause, a halt in the solemn march of cantillation. God thrusts the Selah into His Bible and into our lives to make us stop and think, stop and consider, stop and admire, stop and repent, stop and pray, stop and be sick, stop and die. It is not the number of times that we read the Bible through that makes us intelligent in the Scriptures. We must pause. It may take us an hour to one word. It may take a day to one verse. It may take a year to one chapter. We must pause to measure the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, the universe, the eternity of one passage. Matthew Henry made a long pause after the verse, "Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy braise," and it converted him. Cowper made a long pause after the verse, "Being justified freely by His grace," and it converted him. God tells us seventy-seven times meditatively to pause in reading two books in the Bible, leaving to our common sense to decide how often we ought to pause in reading the other sixtyfour Rooks of the Bible. Pause and pray for more light. Pause and weep for our sins. Pause and absorb the strength of one promise. It is not the number of times you go through the Bible, but the number of times the Bible goes through you. Pause! Reflect! Selah! So, in the scroll of your life and mine, we go rushing on in our song of prosperity from note of joy to note of joy, and it is smooth and long-drawn-out legato, and we become indifferent and unappreciative, when lo! we find a blank in the music; no notes between these two bars. A pause! The spaces will be filled up with a sick-bed, or a commercial disaster, or a grave. You and I have been halted by more than one Selah! But, thank God, it is not a ruinous break-down; it makes the past mercies the more valuable, and will make the future the more tender. Whether we understand now or not, it is best for us to pause. It is good to be afflicted. The Selah is not misplaced or wasted. Indeed, we shall all soon have to stop. Men of science are improving human longevity, but no one has proposed to make terrene life perpetual. Yet the GOspel makes death a Selah between two beatitudes, dying triumph standing on one side the grave, celestial escort standing on the other.

III. THE SELAH OF EMPHASIS. Ewald, the German theologian, thinks this word is from the Hebrew word "to ascend," and that it means "you are to lift up your voice and make distinct utterance." Oh! how much we all need to correct our emphasis. We put too much emphasis on the things of this world and too little emphasis on the things of the next world. Behold wretchedness on a throne! Napoleon, while yet emperor, sat dejected, with his face buried in his hands, and a little page presented him a tray of food, saying, "Eat, sir, it will do you good." The emperor looked up and said to him, "You are from the country?" "Yes." "Where your parents have a cottage and some acres of land? Yes." "There is happiness," cried Napoleon. Then behold happiness under worst worldly disadvantage. "I never saw until I was blind," cried a Christian blind man one day. "I never knew contentment when I had my eyesight as I do now that I have lost it. I can truly affirm, though few know how to credit me, that I would on no account change my present situation and circumstances with any that I ever enjoyed before I was blind." Oh, my hearers, change your emphasis. Put less weight on this world and more weight on God as a joy and an unfading portion.

IV. THE SELAH OF PERPETUITY. The Targum renders this word "for ever." Many writers agree in its meaning "for ever." In the very verse from which my text is taken, Selah means not only poetic significance and intermission and emphasis, but eternal reverberation. For ever! God's goodness for ever, God's government for ever, gladness of the righteous for ever. This Selah of perpetuity makes all earthly inequalities insignificant; the difference between sceptre and needle, between Alhambra and hut, between chariot and cart; between throne and kerbstone, between Axminster and bare floor, between satin and sackcloth, trivial. This is the Selah that makes getting ready so important. For such a prolongation of travel, are we provided with guide books and passes and escort? Are we putting out into wilderness sirocco-swept and ghoul-haunted, or into regions of sun-lighted and spray-sprinkled garden? Is it to be Elysium or Gehenna? As we start we must keep on. That current is so swift that once in it no oar can resist it, no helm steer out of it, no herculean or titanic arm baffle it. Hear the long-resounding echo — For ever! But there are two for evers. The one is as swift as the other, as long as the other, as mighty as the other, but the one empties into an ocean of gladness, opaline above and coraline beneath. The other goes down over a plunge of awful abysm of despair. On the one sail argosies of light, on the other the charred hulks of a fiery cyclone. Wake up to the value of your deathless spirit! Strike out for heaven! Arouse ye, the men and women for whom Christ died! Selah!

(T. De Witt Talmage.)

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KJV: I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah.

WEB: I will dwell in your tent forever. I will take refuge in the shelter of your wings. Selah.