cheenc03a.pdf

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SELA-HAMMAHLEKOTH
the land of Edom, surnamed Joktheel, is called Rekem
by the As3yrians (so Eus.. but Jer. 'Syrians'). Still,
as rlreii'herr they . ao~eal .. to 10s.. thcv may not be
speaking here on their o,vn~nuthoritj. lor. (Ant.
iv. 47 71)ray~ that Petra, the capital of Arabia, was
called opn., or pmep., from its foundw Rekem. a
hlidianite king. But Targ. Onk, and Targ. Jon.
apply 097 to Kadesh-'bumea,' tien. 16x4 2Or. n,m
is 5uppored to be conilected with JD,,. 'to stone' ; it
is prubnbly, ho\vever, as applied to Kadesh, a corrupt
fragment of (Jerahmeel,' whilst, as applied to Petra, it
may perhaps, as Wrtlrtein suggests. be derived from
the Greek pjypa, 'a cleft io the rocks.'
Wellhauxn IDe Gemli6rrr 118701. 20. n. 1) douhrr whether
... . . . ~
Peira (4 nhpa : ai ilhpo,), however, which gave its
name to the nrovince Arabia Petrga lb ,,
mr& nirwv
Z, Petra. 'Apapia, ilgathemerus), became famous
under the NAaAmfiA~s
(y.%); but, to judge
from the ad~antaeer - of its situation. it was doubtless n
city or fortress Idore that time Its ruins are in the
deep valley called CVBdy Mils;? (from its connection in
in Mohammedan legend with Moses). which ir in the
mountains forming the eastern wall of the grea ralley
between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of 'Aljabn. Wady
Mnsa lies just II, of the watershed between the two
sear, in 30- 19' N. lat. and 35O 31' E. 10"g-1 Travellers
coming up the 'Arabah usually approach the ruins from
the SW. by a rough path, partly of artificial conrtruc-
tion but the natural entrance is from the E. down a
narrow defile more than a mile long called the Sik
('shaft'). The Sik is a contraction in the valley of a
strean, which comes down from the E., rising in the
so-called Fountain of Moses j'Ain Mit~a),~ and passing
between the vi11nger of Elji and'Aireh (Palmer). Both
these placer are ancient; the latter is the fortress Wo-
'aim of Yak~t.~ whilst Elji, mentioned by Edrisi, is the
.Gaia urbs juxtacivitatem Petam' of the 0nornnrticon."
Below these and above the ravine the characteristic
rock~cut tombs and dwellingr of the Kabatarans begin
to appear.
Not only war Petra a place of iefi~ge and a safe
storehou~e, it was also the great centre of the Nvbataean
caravan trade. It was the place where the Gaza road
branched off from that to Hostra, Palmyra, and N.
Syria, and it commanded the route from Egypt to
Damascus. From Petra, too, there went a great route
direct through the desert to the head of the Persian
~uit ~hur Perra became a centre for all the main
liner of overland trade between the E. and the W.,
and it war not till the fall of the Nabatean kingdom
that Palmvra suoerreded it as the chief emwrium of
. .
N. .4ml,ia.
See 1.6on de Lsborde =nd Linant, Yoyegg TAmbia
F"tr!e (1830); Duc de i.uynrr, Vay~fd drzj/orolion d /n nlr
mortr (&a,); Palmer, Desert ofihr Exadd, *o{; virconti,
Yiiggii in Am6ie Petre= (1872); Lihbey, EFQ, IF*,
P- 1'2/ T.K.C.,sI;W.R.S..$2.
H M~PIC~EICA [H.%L]; cp Driver's note), the name
of a mountain where Saul and David 'played hide and
seek' 11 S. 2328 f 1. Saul hurries alone on one ride of
< ,
the mbuntain, thinking to overtake theunseen David,
and David on the other Bier (as he thinks) before the
unseen Saul. Theie is dancer " of their comine - into
collision, which is averted by the news of an inroad of
the I'hilirtines ; Saul turns aside fiom the chase. The
narrator must have exolained s4Id-hammahlekoth so as
to suggest this .hide'and seek' game. B& neither
'rock of divisionr' (EV:VmS), nor 'rock of escaping' (an
unjustifiable rendering) can be tight. Though the
name is confirmed on the whole by the certainly corrupt
form ,527 (see HACHILAH), we are almost driven to
suppose that the original form was niin?? y>p, 'the
rock of the rn@al8fh' (circling dances). Meholah, like
Hachilah, may come from ' Jerahmeel.' T. K. c.
8ELAE (il\~) occurs seventy-one times in forty
~ralmr, and three timer in Habakkuk 13,913). Mostly
Data of xT ft occurs in the middle of a psalm ; but
Blld vsrsions, m four psalms (39 24 46) also at the
end. Usually if occurs only once in a
psalm : but there are sever'tl cares of two Selahs, and
in some psalms we find three (3 32 46 66 68 77 140) ;
Ps, 89 actunllv resents four. In 5520 1x91 574 l3l
Hab. 339 %lab occurs in the middle of a Ce&. T&
orcents . ~~.. ronnwt . . it closelv ~ with ~ the orecedine ~ ~ word: ~ ~ ~
Aq., Jer.. Tg. also imply that it forms part of the text.
There three versions take it to mean 'always' (dri,
rrmprr andjugifer, imCyC, but also x-mn). So PE. 9x7,
Iheod. and LiXhor give brl ; Qninta rls rods aluivor ;
Srxta Loravibr. 6. however, gives hd$ohpo, a word
of somewhat uncertain signification (Theodoret, dhou~
urrapoh$) ; it occurs more frequently than the Hebrew
, '.","L a=,&,,. .
\'ariiour conjectures as to theetymology of Selah have
been offered (see Ger. the^. 955 ; and the commentaries
,, Use and of,?elitrsch and Baethgen) : even a Greek
ongm (pdMr) has been suggested (Paulus
meaninp' Cassel ; see Siegfried-Stade, Ler.). Parisot
(Rm. did[. . Ocf. 1899) approves the theory that Selah
represents a musical interlude. Briggs suggests that
when a section of a psalm or a prayer was used apart
from its context in liturgical service it war followed
by a doxology, and that ' Selah ' divider a psalm into
~ection~ for Liturgical use' By an inductire process
Miss E. Btiew "" arrives at results of much interest 1AJSL
161.~~). These partly depend on the correctner; of the
MT ; hut Grimme has rhotvn that in some cases (and
the present writer, Che. Ps.bl, has added considerably
to the number) the ik of MT ir due to corruption of
the text.
Attractive as the view that a h ir properly a musical
indication may be, it will have to be reconsidered if
Conjectured the other so-called musicnl notes in
the headings owe their existence to
oIigilL textval corm~fion. In that case it
hmes lausible to hold !hit n5o is a corruption of
FaUZm (&). 'supplement, or ZPiaN&), 'for
~up~leme~ting.' The note may either be a direction
to supplement the MS at a defective place from another
MS, or an intimation that an editor at this point has
made an insertion in the psalms. Possibly the old
traditional interpretation 'always' points to a reading
niv or oivi. which was itself a corruotion of o$d or
4 Pcrhaps also the '1%" of Gen. ?A,, [see In*?"].
6 See Tuch, Gex.ll) 271 n.
I 'An inductive study of Selah' (IBL 18 xjn.6). Brigzr
thinlr. it pmhab~c that ni~ 4 imperative coho-tive, .lie
up a benediction or doxology.