Sela

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For Icelandic rivers named Selá, see here. For the Star Trek character, see Sela (Star Trek).

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. Sela (from Se'lah, rock) was the capital of Edom, situated in the great valley extending from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea (2 Kings 14:7). It was near Mount Hor, close by the desert of Zin. It is called "the rock" (Judg. 1:36). When Amaziah took it he called it Joktheel (q.v.) It is mentioned by the prophets (Isa. 16:1; Obad. 1:3) as doomed to destruction.

Sela is idetified with the ruins of Sela, east to Tafileh in Jordan (idenified as biblical Tophel) and near Bostra, all Edomite cities in the mount of Edom.

Sela appears in later history and in the Vulgate Version of the Bible under the name of Petra. "The caravans from all ages, from the interior of Arabia and from the Gulf of Persia, from Hadramaut on the ocean, and even from Sabea or Yemen, appear to have pointed to Petra as a common centre; and from Petra the tide seems again to have branched out in every direction, to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, through Arsinoe, Gaza, Tyre, Jerusalem, and Damascus, and by other routes, terminating at the Mediterranean." (See Edom [2].)

Sela in Saudi Arabia is also an abandoned Jewish city, just north of Medina, the city of Prophet Mohammad north of Mecca.