to be silent: to make no sound where a voice could be heard, most often the deliberate silence of someone who could speak and says nothing
At its core the word says something plain: no sound is coming out. What makes it worth noticing is that the silence is nearly always one that could have been broken. Someone is asked a direct question and answers nothing. A crowd leans on a beggar to stop shouting. A voice that ought to be raised goes quiet instead.
The New Testament uses it across four shades:
- someone under questioning says nothing at all
- a crowd or an opponent presses a raised voice to stop
- a man loses the power of speech and cannot break the silence
- the wind and the sea are ordered to hush as if they were people
The last two are worth a second look. Zechariah's silence is not his choice: the angel tells him he will be silent and unable to speak until the promise comes true, and it is those added words, not this verb on its own, that make the loss involuntary. In the boat, Jesus speaks to the sea the way a person would be told to hush, and then follows it with a blunter command meaning to be muzzled (φιμόω).
Set beside its neighbors, this word keeps its focus on a mouth that stays shut. The other common word for keeping silence (σιγάω) leans toward holding something back or keeping a secret, and a third (ἡσυχάζω) reaches past speech to a quiet, undisturbed way of living.
Nuances
Whether the command to the sea at Mark 4:39 belongs with the quieting of the natural world or with the silencing of a hostile personal power, given that the same verb is paired with the muzzling command Jesus uses of an unclean spirit at Mark 1:25.
- contestedThe pairing with the muzzling command reflects the technical vocabulary of Greek binding-spells, so Mark narrates the storm-stilling as the subduing of a quasi-demonic power and the silence is that imposed on a hostile speaker.; Campbell Bonner, "Traces of Thaumaturgic Technique in the Miracles," HTR 20 (1927): 171-81; J. Marcus, Mark 1-8, AYB 27 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 333-39
- contestedThe command echoes the Old Testament tradition of God rebuking and subduing the raging waters, so the verb keeps its ordinary sense of a tumult falling quiet and needs no demonic addressee.; H. C. Kee, "The Terminology of Mark's Exorcism Stories," NTS 14 (1968): 232-46; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 224-26