Sela

Sela ("rock") was the great rock-fortress of Edom in the highlands south of the Dead Sea, captured by King Amaziah of Judah (2 Kings 14:7). After ten thousand Edomites died in the Valley of Salt and another ten thousand were thrown from the cliff (2 Chronicles 25:12), Amaziah renamed Sela "Joktheel" — the name it still bore in the chronicler's day. The Hebrew Sela is preserved in the later Greek "Petra," both meaning "rock"; most scholars identify biblical Sela with the rose-red rock-city in southern Jordan that became the Nabataean capital. Isaiah's oracle to Moab refers to refugees seeking shelter "from Sela, by way of the desert" (Isaiah 16:1).