saleuō

This is the ordinary word for shaking something so it sways, wobbles, or gives way. Underneath every use lies one picture: something once steady is set into motion. A reed bends in the wind, a flood batters a house, an earthquake heaves the ground, the foundations of a prison rattle loose. Whatever the scale, the word says that what stood firm is now moving.

From that plain base it reaches in two directions. On the small end, it can mean shaking a container so its contents settle and pack down, the way a measure of grain is shaken together until it is heaped full. On the vast end, it turns cosmic: the Gospels warn that at the end "the powers of the heavens will be shaken," and Hebrews pictures God shaking not just the earth but heaven itself, so that only what cannot be shaken is left standing.

It also moves inside a person. To be shaken can mean to be knocked off your secure footing. Paul tells one church not to be so easily shaken in mind by a false rumor, and in Acts troublemakers "shake up" the crowds to stir a riot. The opposite is the confidence of the Psalm that Peter quotes, "I shall not be shaken," because God keeps the believer steady. A stronger word for a sudden violent quake (σείω) sits close by, as does the word for stirring up inner turmoil (ταράσσω); this word leans toward a sustained tottering or loss of stability rather than a single sharp jolt.

So one verb spans the world's coming collapse and the believer's unshakable ground, the trembling of the earth and the wavering of a divided heart. The steadiness or its loss is always the point.