According to Merriam Webster, the word is “a term of uncertain meaning found in the Hebrew text of the Psalms and Habakkuk carried over untranslated into some English versions.” Hypotheses abound: it could be a liturgical-musical mark, an instruction to “stop and listen,” a blessing meaning “forever,” an injunction to destroy bad people, or maybe an instruction to delete language that crept into a psalm and should be skipped. Some, including the authors of The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, interpret it as “exalt.”
selah
In Laura Walker’s psalmbook, this word appears: first, large and lowercase, on the page where ordinarily you’d find a dedication, and then another three times in the book, including in the last poem.
