Psalm 46: Still

“Be still and know that I am God.” How many times have we heard that verse, sung it’s lyrics or spoken it to ourselves? There are definitely more famous or popular psalms, but this may be the psalms most quoted sentence. What does it mean? As I have been thinking about this verse, I have realized that most often, when it is quoted to me, it’s in the context of inactivity, “I’m just going to ‘Be still and know that He is God’”. Is that really what the Sons of Korah want us to do? Is this a call to inactivity or is it a call to right activity? Is it telling us to do nothing or is it asking us to consider that we might have been doing the wrong thing all along? Even more, is this a statement about what we do or a question of what we know?

Psalm 46 is, from beginning to end, a song of trust, it is a reminder of who God is with a response of confidence in Him. First, we are told that” God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” That statement requires a response. This is one of the things we forget most often, statements about God are meant to create responses in us. We don’t say these things about God to feel better about ourselves or to remind Him of who He is so that He will do what we expect, we say these things about God to check our lives and to search our hearts, to bring ourselves into line with who He is. What is the response to God being our refuge, strength and help? “Therefore we will not fear . . .” The Sons of Korah make a very clear statement here, “God is, so we will” or in this case “will not”. In his book, Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby wrote that what we believe is revealed through how we live not what we say. That’s also what Psalm 46 is telling us, if we believe that God is our refuge then we will not be afraid. Their examples feel almost dramatic, if the earth fails, the mountains crumble into the ocean, if the sea rises to overtake the mountains, we will not be afraid because of what we know about God. Their song of trust does not say that God will keep them from it, but that God will keep them in it. They were singing what Peter wrote many years later, “we are kept . . .”

The first stanza was confidence in God no matter what happens in nature, the second is confidence no matter what happens in culture. When writing about Jerusalem, the Sons of Korah said, “God is in the midst of her: she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.” That was the promise of God’s presence, of God’s love, of God’s care and protection. That promise was meant to elicit a response. There were realities that couldn’t be avoided, “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter”, but what they were sure of, the response of their faith in the midst of the battle was to believe that God “utters His voice, the earth melts. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” The protection of God hems us in with Him not from the world we live in, adversity or even our adversary. The life of Christ proves this more than any other. Jesus did only what He saw the Father do (John 5:19), said only what the Father had commanded Him to say (John 12:49), He was in the Father and the Father was in Him and yet that intimacy did not shield Him from adversity, it protected Him in adversity. We are in the midst of a culture war, the nations rage, kingdoms are tottering, the question is not where God is or what God is doing, the question is are we living like those being kept? The presence of war is not always a call to fight, sometimes it’s an opportunity to trust the One who fights for us, to let everything shake and hold on only to the Unshakable One, to live from the hope within us rather than for the things around us.

Finally, the last stanza. The first stanza started with a statement about God, the second with a promise for Jerusalem, the third begins with a call to each one of us. “Come, behold the works of the LORD . . .” In other words, look at what God has done, remember how He has moved, talk about who He is and live from His love. There is then a statement of God’s sovereignty, “He has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.” God is in control. We say it often, but we trust it less. The Sons of Korah are asking us to see God in the midst of everything that is going on around us. If the earth fails, God is still holding it. If the nations rage, God is still present in it. If destruction comes you will see God in the desolation, when wars end it’s God who ended them, He is with us, He is for us and He will always do all things well. We don’t need to trust Him for an outcome, we need to trust Him in the outcome.

That’s what brings us to that famous statement, “Be still and know that I am God.” God Himself is now speaking through the Sons of Korah and what is He telling us? “Be still”. Again, what does that mean? The Hebrew word here is “raphah” it means “to sink, relax, sink down, let drop, be disheartened”. Several different modern translations have moved from “Be still” to “Stop your fighting and know that I am God.” It’s not a call to inactivity but to right activity, not to sit back and see what happens but to stop trying to make something happen. It’s a rebuke and correction, not a release from effort. Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon translates the first sentence of Psalm 46:10 this way, “leave off your own attempt and know that I am God.” So, what does this famous sentence really mean? I believe it’s calling us to stop fighting the culture wars and start pressing in to know, love and trust the heart and hand of God. It’s a call to stop trying to get our way and to learn to know and follow His ways. It’s a call to trust God’s character even when we don’t understand His actions in the moment. The rest of the verse is the basis of our trust, it’s what we are supposed to hope in and live from, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” God is saying that He is in control, He will not be mocked, He will receive His glory and His will always comes to pass. That’s hard for us to understand but it’s often even harder for us to accept. Our calling is not to change anything around us but to be changed, not to remove the darkness but to be the light. We don’t do that in our strength we do it with our faith, with our trust, with lives that reflect that we believe God enough to stop fighting for our way so that we can begin living for His.