The Silence Verses

Twelve Biblical Passages on the Importance of Silence, Stillness and Solitude

One evening I was asked to speak to a small house church in my neighborhood on the spirituality of silence.

This particular community is evangelical, and silence is not something that they have traditionally placed a lot of emphasis on. But their pastor (who lives across the street from me) is discerning in his heart a call to greater silence in his prayer, and knowing that silence is “my thing” he invited me to come share with the community.

It seems to me that for a community like that, the best way to introduce them to the spirituality of silence is to share with them a variety of Biblical verses that affirm the beauty and importance of silence, as well as stillness and solitude.

So I drew up a list of the Biblical verses, and figured it was worth sharing here. The first ten verses come from the New Revised Standard Version; Psalm 65:1 comes from the Jewish Artscroll translation, and I Thessalonians 4:11 is my own translation (see a note at the end of this post about those two verses in particular). However, almost any scholarly Bible translation will reveal how important silence is in these passages. What I love about each of these passages is that they look at silence not in human terms (i.e., keeping silent — or speaking out — when relating to others), but rather they all point us to the beauty and meaning of silence in how we relate to God.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to keep silence…” Ecclesiastes 3:1,7

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

“For God alone my soul in silence waits.” Psalm 62:1

“But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!” Habakkuk 2:20

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15

“Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand; the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests.” Zephaniah 1:7

“It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Lamentations 3:26

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Mark 1:35

“When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Revelation 8:1

“He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:11-12 (other versions render this as “a still small voice” or “a light silent sound”)

“To You, silence is praise, O God in Zion.” Psalm 65:1 (see note below)

“Honor your heart through contemplative silence.” I Thessalonians 4:11 (see note below)

A Note on Psalm 65:1 and I Thessalonians 4:11

We all know the concept of something getting lost in translation. These two Bible verses are poster-children for that principle.

In its original Hebrew, the first verse of Psalm 65 links the Hebrew word for contemplative silence (ḏūmîyāh) with the concept of praise (təhillāh). But ḏūmîyāh also carries a sense of “waiting,” and so there is a long tradition of scholars translating this verse into some version of “Praise waits for you, God.” But that is grammatically convoluted: how can praise have agency to wait? So other translations have gone even farther from the Hebrew meaning with renditions like “Praise is due to you.” Some translations, however, like the Jewish Artscroll version, prefer to read the Hebrew more literally, which results in a verse luminous with contemplative meaning: “To You, silence is praise, O God in Zion.”

Meanwhile, in the New Testament letter to the Thessalonians, the author (Paul) offers a series of brief words of advice and encouragement in chapter four. Among them is verse 11, which the NRSV translates as “aspire to live quietly.” That seems like good and wise counsel. But if we look at the Greek original, once again we find a contemplative sense that didn’t make it across the translation. In Greek, this phrase is φιλοτιμεῖσθαι ἡσυχάζειν (philotimeisthai hēsychazein); philotimeisthai literally means “love honor” while hēsychazein likewise means “being still” or “keeping silence” — but specifically connoting an interior silence, not just the absence of speech. Famously, this word became associated with Greek Orthodox monks who practice the contemplative spirituality associated with the Jesus Prayer (also called “the prayer of the heart”) — to be a hesychast is to be a contemplative, a practitioner of deep inner silence. This all points to Paul’s actual point being “love the honor you will find in interior silence and stillness” — or, to make this flow a bit more elegantly in English, “honor your heart through contemplative silence.”

I know that it’s dangerous to use proof-texts, but still, I can’t help but believe that these verses taken together make a powerful witness to how silence is an essential nutrient for the spiritual life — and not only in the Biblical tradition, but as an example for spiritual seekers world over.