Contemporary Usage
Selah is used in Iyaric Rastafarian vocabulary. It can be heard at the end of spoken-word segments of some reggae songs. Its usage here, again, is to accentuate the magnitude and importance of what has been said, and often is a sort of substitute for Amen. The Iyaric term has also been said by folk etymology to signify "Seal up" as in, "may JAH seal up any inadvertent mistakes in what was said".
Furman Bisher, the well-known former sports editor and former columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for decades signed off his columns with "Selah."
In Predator 2, just before being killed by the predator, the Jamaican drug lord King Willie says, "His foundation lie in the holy mountain" before pausing and adding "Selah".
Read more about this topic: Selah
Famous quotes containing the words contemporary and/or usage:
“... black progress and progress for women are inextricably linked in contemporary American politics, and ... each group suffers when it fails to grasp the dimensions of the others struggle.”
—Margaret A. Burnham (b. 1944)
“I am using it [the word perceive] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)