193. Selah

Selah

Psa_61:4 : ’93Selah.’94

The majority of Bible readers look upon this word of my text as of no importance. They consider it a superfluity, a mere filling in, a meaningless interjection, a useless refrain, an undefined echo. Selah! But I have to tell you that it is no Scriptural accident. It occurs seventy-four times in the Book of Psalms and three times in the Book of Habakkuk. You must not charge this perfect book with seventy-seven trivialities. Selah! It is an enthroned word. If, according to an old writer, some words are battles, then this word is a Marathon, a Thermopyl’e6, a Sedan, a Waterloo. It is a word decisive, sometimes for poetic beauty, sometimes for solemnity, sometimes for grandeur, and sometimes for eternal import. Through it roll the thundering chariots of the Omnipotent God. I take this word for my text because I am so often asked what is its meaning, or whether it has any meaning at all. It has an ocean of meaning, from which I shall this morning dip up only four or five bucketfuls. I will speak to you, so far as I have time, of the Selah of poetic significance, the Selah of intermission, the Selah of emphasis, and the Selah of perpetuity.

Are you surprised that I speak of the Selah of poetic significance? Surely the God who sapphired the heavens and made the earth a rosebud of beauty, with oceans hanging to it like a drop of morning dew, would not make a Bible without rhythm, without redolence, without blank verse. God knew that eventually the Bible would be read by a great majority of young people. In this world of malaria and casualty an octogenarian is exceptional, and as thirty years is more than the average of human life, if the Bible is to be a successful book it must be adapted to the young. Hence the prosody of the Bible’97the drama of Job, the pastoral of Ruth, the epic of Judges, the dithyrambic of Habakkuk, the monody of Jeremiah, the lyric of Solomon’92s Song, the oratorio of the Apocalypse, the idyl, the strophe, the antistrophe and the Selah of the Psalms.

Wherever you find this word Selah, it means that you are to rouse up to great stanza, that you are to open your soul to great analogies, that you are to spread the wing of your imagination for great flight. ’93I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.’94 ’93The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it. Selah.’94 ’93Who is this King of glory? The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.’94 ’93Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.’94 ’93Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.’94 ’93The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.’94 ’93Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah.’94 ’93I will hide under the covert of thy wings. Selah.’94 ’93O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness. Selah.’94

Wherever you find this word it is a signal of warning hung out to tell you to stand off the track while the rushing train goes by with its imperial passengers. Poetic word, charged with sunrise and sunset, tempest and earthquake, resurrections and millenniums.

Next I come to speak of the Selah of intermission. Gesenius, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, and other writers agree in saying that this word Selah means a rest in music; what the Greeks call a diapsalma, a pause, a halt in the solemn march of cantellation. Every musician knows the importance of it. If you have ever seen Julian, the great musical leader, stand before five thousand singers and players upon instruments, and with one stroke of his baton smite the multitudinous hallelujah into silence; and then, soon after that, with another stroke of his baton, rouse up the full orchestra to a great outburst of harmony, then you know the mighty effect of a musical pause. It gives more power to what went before; it gives more power to what is to come after. So God thrusts the Selah into his Bible and into our lives, compelling us to stop and think, stop and consider, stop and admire, stop and pray, stop and repent, stop and be sick, stop and die. It is not the great number of times that we read the Bible through that makes us intelligent in the Scriptures. We must pause. What though it take an hour for one word? What though it take a week for one verse? What though it take a year for one chapter? We must pause and measure the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, the universe, the eternity of meaning in one verse.

I should like to see some one sail around one little adverb in the Bible, a little adverb of two letters, during one lifetime’97the word ’93so’94 in the New Testament passage, ’93God so loved the world.’94 Augustine made a long pause after the verse, ’93Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,’94 and it converted him. Matthew Henry made a long pause after the verse, ’93Open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise,’94 and it converted him. William Cowper made a long pause after the verse, ’93Being freely justified by his grace,’94 and it converted him. When God tells us seventy-seven times meditatively to pause in reading two of the books of the Bible, he leaves to our common-sense to decide how often we should pause in reading the other sixty-four books of the Bible.

We must pause and ask for more light. We must pause and weep over our sins. We must pause and absorb the strength of one promise. I sometimes hear people boasting about how many times they have read the Bible through, when they seem to know no more about it than a passenger would know about the State of Pennsylvania who should go through it in a St. Louis lightning express train and in a Pullman sleeper, the two characteristics of the journey being velocity and somnolence. 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, also, on the scroll of your life and mind. We go rushing on, in the song of our prosperity, from note of joy to note of joy, and it is a long-drawn-out legato, and we become indifferent and unappreciative, when suddenly we come upon a blank in the music. There is nothing between those bars. A pause. God will fill it up with a sick-bed, or a commercial disaster. But, thank God it is not a breaking-down; it is only a pause. The Selah of Habakkuk and David is a dividing line between two anthems. The Psalms begin with the words, ’93Blessed is the man,’94 and after seventy-four Selahs, they close with the words, ’93Praise ye the Lord.’94 So there are mercies behind us, and there are going to be mercies before us. It is good for us that God halts us in our fortunes, and halts us with physical distresses, and halts us at the graves of our dead. More than once you and I have been halted by such a Selah. You wrung your hands and said, ’93I can’92t see any sense in this providence; I can’92t see why God gave me that child, if he is so soon going to take it away. Oh, my desolated home! Oh, my broken heart!’94 You could not understand it. But it was not a Selah of overthrow. It gave you a keener insight into the mercies of the past, and it prepared your heart for a thankful reception of the mercies to come. There are brightnesses ahead, triumphs ahead, consolations ahead, reunions ahead, coronations ahead, heaven ahead.

When the Huguenots were being very much persecuted in France, a father and mother were obliged to fly from the country, leaving their little child in the possession of a comparative stranger. They did not know whether they would ever return, or, returning, if they would be able to recognize their child, for by that time she might be grown. The mother was almost frenzied at the thought of leaving the child, and then, even if coming back again, not being able to know her. Before they left, the father drew his sword, and he marked the wrist of that child with a deep cut. It must have been a great exigency to make a father do that. Years of separation passed, and then the parents returned, and their first anxiety was to find their lost child. They looked up and down the land, examining the wrists of the young people, when lo! after a while the father found a maiden with a scar upon her wrist. She knew him not, but he knew her. And oh, the joy of the reunion! So it is now. ’93Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.’94 He cutteth, he marketh, and when he comes to claim his own the Lord will know them that are his; know them by the scar of their trouble, know them by the stroke of their misfortune, know them by the mark of their desolation.

Oh, it is good that the Lord sometimes halts us.

David says, ’93It is good that I have been afflicted. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.’94 Indeed, we must all soon stop. Scientists have improved human longevity, but none of them have proposed to make terrene life perpetual. But the Gospel makes death only a Selah between two beatitudes’97between dying triumph on the one side of the grave, and celestial escort on the other side of the grave. Going out of this life, to the unprepared, is a great horror. ’93Give me more laudanum,’94 said dying Mirabeau; ’93give me more laudanum, that I may not think of eternity and what is to come.’94 And dying Hobbes said, ’93I leave my body to the grave, and my soul to the great perhaps.’94 It has the discord of an infidel’92s life breaking down into the jargon of despair; but the Gospel makes the death of the Christian a Selah between redemption and enthronement. ’93Almost well,’94 said dying Richard Baxter; ’93almost well.’94 ’93Play those notes over again’97those notes which have been so great a delight and solace to me,’94 said the dying Christian Mozart. ’93None but Christ! none but Christ!’94 exclaimed dying Lambert. Richard Cameron, the Scotch covenanter, went into the battle three times praying, ’93Lord, spare the green and take the ripe. This is the day I have longed for. This is the day I shall get my crown. Come, let us fight it to the last. Forward!’94 So you see there is only a short pause, a Selah of intermission, between dying consolations on the one side and overtopping raptures on the other.

My flesh shall slumber in the ground

Till the last trumpet’92s joyful sound,

Then burst the chains with sweet surprise,

And in my Saviour’92s image rise.

I next speak of the Selah of emphasis. Ewald, the German orientalist and theologian, says that this word means to ascend; and wherever you find it, he says, you must look after the modulation of the voice, and you must put more force into your utterance. It is a Selah of emphasis. Ah! my friends, you and I need to correct our emphasis. We put too much emphasis on this world, and not enough on God and the next world. People seem to think these things around us are so important, while the things of the next are not worthy of consideration. The first need for some of us is to change our emphasis. Look at Wretchedness on a throne. Napoleon, while yet emperor of France, sat down dejected, his hands over his face. A lad came in with a tray of food and said: ’93Eat, it will do you good.’94 The emperor looked up and said: ’93You are from the country?’94 The lad replied, ’93Yes.’94 ’93Your father has a cottage and a few acres of ground?’94 ’93Yes.’94 ’93There is happiness,’94 said the dejected emperor. Ah! Napoleon never put the emphasis in the right place until he was expiring at St. Helena.

On the other hand, look at satisfaction amid the worst earthly disadvantage. ’93I never saw until I was blind,’94 said a Christian man. ’93I never knew what contentment was while I had my eyesight, as I know what contentment is now that I have lost my eyesight. I affirm, though few would credit it, that I would not exchange my present position and circumstances for my circumstances before I lost my eyesight.’94 That man put the emphasis in the right place. We want to put less stress upon this world, and more stress upon our God as our everlasting portion.

David found out the nothingness of this world and the all-sufficiency of God. Notice how he interjects the Selahs. ’93Trust in the Lord at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Selah.’94 ’93Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.’94 ’93The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. Selah.’94 Let the world have its honors and its riches and its pomp. Let me have the Lord for my light, my peace, my fortress, my pardon, my hope, my heaven.

What sinners value I resign;

Lord! ’91tis enough that thou art mine.

I shall behold thy blissful face,

And stand complete in righteousness.

This world is all an empty show,

But the bright world to which I go

Hath joys substantial and sincere:

When shall I wake and find me there?

O glorious hour! O blest abode!

I shall be near and like my God,

And sin and sense no more control

The endless pleasures of my soul.

Oh, my friends, let us this day correct our emphasis.

Next, and lastly, I speak of the Selah of perpetuity. The Targum, which is the Bible in Chaldee, renders this word of my text, ’93forever.’94 Many writers agree in believing and stating that one meaning of this word is ’93forever.’94 In this very verse from which I take my text Selah means not only poetic significance and intermission and emphasis, but it means eternal reverberation’97forever! God’92s government forever, God’92s goodness forever, the gladness of the righteous forever. Of course, you and I have not surveyor’92s chain with enough links to measure that domain of meaning. In this world we must build everything on a small scale. A hundred years are a great while. A tower five hundred feet high is a great height. A journey of four thousand miles is very long. But eternity! If the archangel has not strength of wing to fly across it, but flutters and drops like a wounded sea-gull, there is no need of our trying in the small shallop of human thought to voyage across it.

A sceptic desiring to show his contempt for the passing years, and to show that he could build enduringly, had his own sepulchre made of the finest and the hardest marble, and then he had put on the door the words, ’93For time and for eternity’94; but it so happened that the seed of a tree somehow got into an unseen crevice of the marble. That seed grew and enlarged until it became a tree, and split the marble to pieces. There can be no eternization of anything earthly. But forever! Will you and I live as long as that? We are apt to think of the grave as the terminus. We are apt to think of the hearse as our last vehicle. We are apt to think of seventy or eighty or ninety years, and then a cessation. Instead of that, we find the marble slab of the tomb is only a milestone, marking the first mile, and that the great journey is beyond. We have only time enough in this world to put on the sandals and to clasp our girdle and to pick up our staff. We take our first step from cradle to grave, and then we open the door and start’97great God, whither? The clock strikes the passing away of time, but not the passing away of eternity. Measureless! Measureless!

This Selah of perpetuity makes earthly inequalities so insignificant, the difference between sceptre and needle, between Alhambra and hut, between chariot and cart, between throne and curbstone, between Axminster and bare floor, between satin and sackcloth, very trivial. This Selah of perpetuity makes our getting ready so important. For such prolongation of travel, what outfit of guidebooks, of passports, and of escort? Are we putting out on a desert, simoon-swept and ghoul-haunted, or into regions of sun-lighted and spray-sprinkled gardens? Will it be Elysium or Gehenna?

Once started in that world, we cannot stop. The current is so swift that, once in, no oar can resist it, no helm can steer out of it, no herculean or titanic arm can baffle it. Hark to the long-resounding echo, ’93Forever’94!

But there are two forevers. 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 dismantled by a fiery cyclone.

Oh, wake up to the interest of your deathless spirit! Strike out for heaven. Rouse ye, men and women for whom Jesus died. Selah! Selah! Forever! forever!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage