to fall still: to cease speaking or moving, and so to grow silent, stand motionless, or be brought to an end
The one thing every use of this word shares is a stop. Something that was going, a voice, a movement, or a life, comes to rest. English has no single word for this, which is why translators reach for silent, still, halt, wait, or destroyed depending on what it is that stops.
Most often it is a voice that stops: a person holds his peace out of respect, prudence, or shock. But it can just as easily be a body that stops: enemies frozen like a stone, a commander's order to halt, an army standing motionless. From there the word stretches in two directions. Turned toward God it becomes trustful stillness, the quiet of a soul that stops striving and waits. Turned against an enemy in the prophets it becomes a threat: to be silenced by God is to be wiped out.
A few of the most famous verses in the Bible sit right on the fault line of this word. When Aaron loses his sons, when the people of Tyre's coast hear that their city has fallen, when the sun stops over Gibeon, and when a prophet is forbidden to mourn his wife out loud, careful readers have argued for centuries over whether the word means someone falls silent, freezes in shock, or actually cries out in grief. A second, disputed sense meaning "wail, moan," well attested in the related ancient language Akkadian, hovers over exactly these passages. The word is not vague; it is layered, and in those verses the choice is finally a reading.
Nuances
Whether the verb describing Aaron (וַיִּדֹּם) means "he fell silent" or "he wailed/mourned."
- majority"And Aaron was silent": stunned or submissive silence before the divine verdict on his sons.; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (Doubleday, 1991), 603-605; Targum Onkelos to Leviticus 10:3
- minority"And Aaron wailed/mourned," from the proposed second root דמם II; the ancient Greek "was stunned" and Nahmanides' sequential reading register the same tension.; Baruch A. Levine, "Silence, Sound, and the Phenomenology of Mourning in Biblical Israel," JANES 22 (1993), 89-106
What the sun is said to do over Gibeon: stand still, stand in astronomical opposition, or grow dark.
- majorityThe sun halted its motion ("stood still"), a cosmic miracle; reflected in the ancient Greek and in every traditional version.; David M. Howard Jr., Joshua, New American Commentary 5 (B&H, 1998), 241-247
- minoritySky-omen language: the verbs echo Mesopotamian celestial-omen texts, so the sun and moon "wait/stand in opposition" as an unfavorable sign against the Amorites, not a halted sun.; John H. Walton, "Joshua 10:12-15 and Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts," in Faith, Tradition, and History (Eisenbrauns, 1994), 181-190
- minorityThe word means "grow dark": the sun and moon ceased to shine during a solar eclipse (dated by some to 30 October 1207 BCE), reading the verb against a look-alike word for darkness.; Colin J. Humphreys and W. Graeme Waddington, "Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs," Astronomy & Geophysics 58 (2017), 5.39-5.42; Daniel Vainstub, Hezi Yizhaq, Uzi Avner, "The Miracle of the Sun and Moon in Joshua 10 as a Solar Eclipse," Vetus Testamentum 70 (2020), 722-751
Whether the command to Tyre's coastland means "be silent / be stunned" or "wail."
- majority"Be silent" or "be still": stunned silence at the news of Tyre's fall.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27, Continental Commentary (Fortress, 1997), 419-422; J.J.M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2015)
- minority"Wail," parallel to "howl, O ships of Tarshish" in the previous verse, from the proposed second root דמם II.; G.R. Driver, "Difficult Words in the Hebrew Prophets," in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy (T&T Clark, 1950); John D.W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, Word Biblical Commentary, rev. ed. (Nelson, 2005)
Whether the word here means "be silent" (paired with "sigh") or "moan for the dead" (read with the following word).
- majority"Sigh in silence": the prophet mourns inwardly while the normal outward mourning rites are forbidden him.; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1979), 503-508; Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1998)
- minority"Moan for the dead," taking the verb with the following word and deriving it from the proposed second root דמם II.; Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37, Anchor Bible 22A (Doubleday, 1997), 508-509