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Bible Dictionaries
Sela
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or SELA means ‘rock,’ ‘cliff,’ or ‘crag,’ and as a common noun is of frequent occurrence in Hebrew. In three or four passages ( Judges 1:36 , 2 Kings 14:7 , Isaiah 16:1-14 :l, and, according to some, Isaiah 42:11 ) the word appears to be a proper name. In Judges 1:36 a site near the southern end of the Dead Sea is required by the context. Such a site would also satisfy the requirements of 2 Kings 14:7 and Isaiah 16:1 . But it is not improbable that more than one place was known as ‘the Cliff ( or Crag).’ It is therefore not Impossible, though far from certain, that the Sela of 2 Kings 14:7 (cf. Joktheel) and Isaiah 16:1 is, as RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] in the latter passage suggests, and as many have held, the place known later as Petra (which also means ‘rock’). Petra lay about 50 miles nearly due south of the Dead Sea, in a valley ‘enclosed on every side by nearly perpendicular rocks of considerable height’ and ‘composed of sand-stone of many different colours.’ It was the capital of the Nahatæans from the close of the 4th cent. b.c. to the heginning of the 2nd cent. a.d. (when it became a Roman province), and during that period a busy commercial centre. For some description of the buildings of Petra and the rock architecture which have given the city great fame, see Bædeker’s Palestine , p. 206, and the literature there cited. ‘The general character of the buildings at Petra is that of the debased Roman style of the 3rd and 4th centuries a.d.’ Apart from the Biblical statements enumerated above, the history of Petra before the Nahatæan period is unknown.
G. B. Gray.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Sela'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/s/sela.html. 1909.
