The family room on a surgical floor had the verse in a frame, and a man I sat with there read it aloud in the fourth hour. God says those words in Psalm 46 right after he breaks the bow and burns the chariot, most likely to nations at war, with his own people listening. They mean stop, let go, and know who is God.
Verse nine first
The sentence everyone knows comes right after a line about weapons.
Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46:8-10 (KJV)
Bows, spears and a chariot on fire, and then the command. The order is the comfort. In the psalm’s order, by the time God says “be still,” the weapons are already broken. He has ended the fight before he asks anyone to stop, so the stillness he asks for is the stillness of people whose war is already over.
The psalm has been loud since its second verse. Mountains are “carried into the midst of the sea,” waters “roar and be troubled,” and in verse 6 “the heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved.” The heathen here are the nations, most likely the ones being told to put down what they are holding.
To whom
The people who were just told “Come, behold” in verse 8 are standing there too, and many readers hear the command as said to them as well. The psalm gives them reason to listen: it was handed “to the chief Musician for the sons of Korah,” a song for God’s people about “the city of God,” of which verse 5 says, “she shall not be moved.” So the command, most likely meant first for the nations, is also a word to God’s own people, who have just watched the weapons break.
At the sea
Israel had been in the same kind of place once before, with the water in front and an army behind. In Exodus 14:12 they complained to Moses that they would have done better to “serve the Egyptians.”
And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
Exodus 14:13-14 (KJV)
In verse 15 the LORD tells Moses, “speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” Standing still came first, and walking came next. At the sea, stillness meant stopping the panic, putting down the complaint that Egypt would have been better, letting God fight, and then going forward when he said go.
The refrain
Many people have carried this verse through the worst year of their lives, and an article about chariots can feel like taking it away. Nothing here takes it away, because the psalm opens with a line that can carry them: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” And twice, in verses 7 and 11, its people sing the same refrain: “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
People hand this verse to each other in hard hours, the way they hand over “everything happens for a reason,” and this one, read whole, can bear the weight they put on it.
I still read the verse most mornings. I read verse nine first now, so there is a burning chariot in front of me before I get to the sentence.
When you are pinned in front of something you cannot fix, the command is let go, and God is the one keeping it together. At the end of the psalm he is the one exalted, and the last thing his people sing is that he is their refuge.