Selah confusion
I am looking for info on the name Selah. I would like to use it for a gn. I thought that Selah was a hebrew boys name meaning pause or reflect, but now I can't find the name anywhere. Can anyone help?? Someone on another board posted that it meant rock, but that is Sela not Selah.
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Hi, Caleigh!There was the same discussion on this board a month ago. So here once more:There is a vocabulary word "sela" meaning "rock" which has been used as a given name.
There is another Hebrew word "selah", which appears in the book of Psalms. It probably marks the end of a paragraph, but its original meaning is not clear. One interpretation derives it from a word meaning "lift up"; this could refer either to the voices of the singers or else to their eyes. In the latter case it may ask the person or persons praying to lift up their eyes and repeat the last verses.
According to another interpretation SELAH is derived from a word for "bow" or "pray", so maybe you were supposed to bow down in prayer at the end of the paragraph.So SELA and SELAH may well be two different names and in fact they are. But people ususally don't cara muchabout Hs at the end of a name (cf. SARA/H, DEBORA/H) so the two might easily get mixed up.Hope this helps to remove the confusion.Andy ;—)
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Hi Caleigh! Jeez, do we have a psychic connection or something? I just came here to post about Selah again, except the pronunciation of it this time. I'm kind of confused about the meaning of Selah, too, but I did a yahoo search and no where in the search results does it mention "rock". There are a couple of web sites that "answer" the question of "what does the word selah mean?" so we obviously aren't the only ones with the question. I'm posting the address to the one that I thought seemed truest, because they gave a lot of support in their argument and the article was fairly long, so they gave it a lot of thought. After that, I think we're kind of on our own as far as the meaning goes, though it would be interesting to hear more about the Sela/Selah difference and about the other rock and place name meanings. Here's the website's address:http://www.mountainretreat.org/net/faq/selah.html
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In the Bible, Selah is a word that means "Take a minute and think about it," as in, "meditate on this."
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Alright girls, I think I've got it figured out. Sela (prn. see-la) means 'rock' and is a hebrew name. Selah (prn. seh-laah) is hebrew and means to pause or reflect. I called a friend and she knew right away what I was talking about, because it's from the bible. As for the pronunciation, I don't see why you can't pronounce it any way you like! This name (Selah) is close to the top of my list for girls, and if I do decide to use it, I will definetly prn. it Say-lah.
I had a hard time finding informatin on this name this morning, but I think that's a good sign because it probably isn't very common at all. IHTH!!
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Sela and Selah are completely different names.
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It is strange that one of them is pronounced see-lah... I'm sure E isn't pronounced EE in Hebrew...
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Hello girls!
Okay here is what i am thinking. I'm thinking that originally Sela was not prn. see-la. If I had to guess I would say that in hebrew the 2 names would be Selah - seh-laah, and sela - sah-laah. Of course I am only guessing. You made references to people such as Sela Ward who prn. her name see-la. Personally I would just consider this an english or anglicized version of a very pretty hebrew word/name. Think Caiolinn (irish) and Caylin (english). JMO.
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Hi there! I'm glad you got something found out, Caleigh! I pronounce it SAY-la too LOL and I'm glad someone else thinks it's okay to pronounce it however you like. I was thinking that I'd just spell it Seyla or Seylah (though a lot of people would still probably try to say it SEE-luh) if I thought pronouncing Selah as SAY-la would screw people up too much, but I really do prefer the Selah spelling. Also, in my searchings on the internet, I found several references to a Christian music group called Selah. I wonder how they/more importantly, their fans pronounce it (since that means there would be at least some people out there with an idea of how to say it, regardless of whether they're saying it "right" or not). And I agree, Claire.... don't really understand how "e" would make the "ee" sound in Hebrew. I'm also glad that my suspicions are confirmed and Sela and Selah are not the same name.
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