Psalm 46:10

“Be still” is often heard as an invitation to quiet. The Hebrew verb is stronger and broader: let go, stop, cease striving, drop your hands. In context God is speaking over a noisy world, telling the warring nations as much as his own people to stop and recognize who is God. “Heathen” in the KJV simply means the nations, the peoples of the earth; the verse looks ahead to God being honoured among all of them.

Psalm 46 is a song of confidence, linked by its heading with the sons of Korah, temple musicians. It begins with the earth shaking and the seas roaring, yet God is a refuge and strength, and a river makes glad the city of God. Just before this verse, God “maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth”, breaking the bow and burning the chariot. Then God speaks. Around it runs the refrain, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” Selah, at the end of it, is a musical or liturgical mark whose exact meaning is uncertain, perhaps a pause. Martin Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God grew out of this psalm.

Many people use the verse for silent prayer and retreat, and that is a fair use: stillness makes room to know God. The original adds something: it is first a call to stop fighting and stop panicking, to let God be God when the world is in uproar. Being still in that sense can happen in a busy hospital corridor as well as a quiet room.

See also Exodus 14:14 and Isaiah 30:15.