Mark 4:35 to 41 · Story · Peace
Jesus Stills the Storm
On the Sea of Galilee a windstorm swamped the disciples' boat and dropped to a perfect calm at Jesus' word.
Fishermen who knew the lake woke a sleeping teacher and asked Him whether He cared that they were perishing.
Then Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea. “Silence!” He commanded. “Be still!” And the wind died down, and it was perfectly calm.
- Where
- Sea of Galilee
- Who
- Jesus of Nazareth
- When
- The evening of the day of the parables by the sea (Mark 4:1 and 4:35)
Summary
The account stands in the first three Gospels, Mark 4:35 to 41, Matthew 8:23 to 27 and Luke 8:22 to 25. The crossing began at evening, after a day of teaching in parables from a boat. Mark alone records that Jesus slept on a cushion in the stern, and Matthew alone sets His question to the disciples before the calm.
- Jesus spoke two Greek commands to the sea, siopa and pephimoso (Mark 4:39).
- The prophet Jonah also slept through a storm at sea (Jonah 1:5).
- Mark's Gospel uses eirene, the Greek word for peace, once, when Jesus sends a healed woman home in peace (Mark 5:34).
One Evening Crossing
Jesus had taught the crowd from a boat all day, and at evening He told His disciples to cross the lake.
Jesus Stills the Storm belongs to the value of peace, because the account sets the calm of one man asleep beside the terror of His friends and ends with a question about their faith. It shows peace held inside danger, before the danger passed.
The question the story answers is what the storm teaches about the peace Jesus had and the peace He asks of His people. Calming the Storm reads the same miracle as the LORD's own act from the Psalms, while Jesus Stills the Storm reads His sleep, His commands and His question for what they teach about peace.
Soon a violent windstorm came up, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him and said, “Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?”Mark sets the swamping boat and the sleeping Jesus in one breath, so the reader sees both at once.
Luke adds that the windstorm came down on the lake while they sailed, so that they were in great danger (Luke 8:23).
The Crossing in Nine Steps
Mark tells the night step by step, from the order to cross to the disciples' question.
Jesus was at rest before the storm broke, and the disciples were afraid after it ended.
- Jesus gives the order to cross the lake"Let us cross to the other side"Mark 4:35
- The crowd is sent away and other boats go with Him"there were other boats with Him"Mark 4:36
- A windstorm rises and the boat takes on water"it was being swamped"Mark 4:37
- Jesus is asleep while the boat fills"sleeping on the cushion"Mark 4:38
- The disciples wake Him with a complaint"don't You care that we are perishing?"Mark 4:38
- Jesus gets up and rebukes the wind and the sea"Silence!" and "Be still!"Mark 4:39
- The wind drops and the lake lies flat"it was perfectly calm"Mark 4:39
- Jesus turns from the sea to the disciples"Do you still have no faith?"Mark 4:40
- The disciples, more afraid than before, ask who He is"Overwhelmed with fear"Mark 4:41
A timeline of nine steps in Mark 4:35 to 41, each with the words Mark uses and its verse.
The wind drops and the lake lies flat, Jesus turns from the sea to the disciples, The disciples, more afraid than before, ask who He is
Three Gospels, One Storm
Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the crossing with different words for the disciples' cry and a different order for His question.
In Mark the disciples call Him "Teacher" and ask whether He cares (Mark 4:38). In Matthew they cry, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" (Matthew 8:25), and in Luke, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" (Luke 8:24).
“You of little faith,” Jesus replied, “why are you so afraid?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it was perfectly calm.In Matthew the disciples hear the word about faith while the waves are still breaking over the boat.
“Where is your faith?” He asked. Frightened and amazed, they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him!”Luke shortens the question to four words and keeps the disciples' fear and wonder side by side.
Asleep in the Stern
Jonah's sleep and the sleep of Jesus differ in where each man was going and why.
Matthew says only that "Jesus was sleeping" (Matthew 8:24).
The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain approached him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call upon your God. Perhaps this God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”The ship's captain woke Jonah with a question much like the disciples' complaint.
The two sleepers differ. Jonah was fleeing from the LORD's call, and the storm came because of him (Jonah 1:4). Jesus slept in the boat He had told His disciples to take, on the crossing He had ordered.
The Psalms give a reason a man may sleep without fear: "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety" (Psalm 4:8).
Two Commands to the Sea
Mark gives Jesus' words to the sea as two short commands, and an older English Bible rendered them "Peace, be still".
The first command, siopa, is the verb for falling silent, used ten times in the New Testament. The second, pephimoso, is a perfect imperative of phimoo, which the lexicon glosses "to muzzle" and which occurs eight times.
Mark used the same verb phimoo earlier, when Jesus rebuked an unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum with the words "Be silent!" (Mark 1:25). In both places Mark also writes that Jesus "rebuked", epitimao.
The American Standard Version of 1901 renders the two commands "Peace, be still", and many readers know the verse in that form. The Greek of Mark 4:39 has no eirene, the word for peace, in either command.
The calm that followed Mark calls galene megale, a great stillness, and the Berean text renders it "perfectly calm". The word galene occurs three times, once in each Gospel's account of this storm.
He calmed the storm to a whisper, and the waves of the sea were hushed. They rejoiced in the silence, and He guided them to the harbor they desired.The psalm gives the LORD the stilling of a storm at sea and the sailors' gladness in the quiet, the background of the disciples' question.
Charles Spurgeon, in The Treasury of David (1878) on Psalm 107:30, described the sailors' joy in the quiet harbour after a storm at sea.
“Then are they glad because they be quiet. No one can appreciate this verse unless he has been in a storm at sea. No music can be sweeter than the rattling of the chain as the shipmen let down the anchor; and no place seems more desirable than the little cove, or the wide bay, in which the ship rests in peace. So he bringeth them unto their desired haven. The rougher the voyage the more the mariners long for port, and heaven becomes more and more ‘a desired haven’, as our trials multiply.”
Charles Spurgeon · The Treasury of David, Vol. 5 · on Psalm 107:30
Peace Before the Wind Dropped
Mark's account turns on one question from Jesus to His frightened friends.
“Why are you so afraid?” He asked. “Do you still have no faith?”Jesus asks what the disciples should have had before the calm came.
The disciples had the presence of Jesus in the boat and His word that they would cross to the other side (Mark 4:35). His question treats their fear as a lack of faith, so the peace He asked of them was trust while the wind still blew.
On the night before the cross Jesus told the same disciples, "I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!" (John 16:33).
Voices on the Storm
Teachers of the early church read the sleep and the storm as lessons in faith under trial.
died 390 · Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus, in his Oration 29, On the Son (fourth century), set the weariness and sleep of Jesus beside His power over the wind and the sea.
Read the page on Gregory of Nazianzus
“He was wearied, but He is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. He was heavy with sleep, but He walked lightly over the sea. He rebuked the winds, He made Peter light as he began to sink.”
Gregory of Nazianzus · Oration 29, On the Son · on Mark 4:38Patristic
died 397 · Ambrose of Milan
Ambrose of Milan (fourth century), as the Catena Aurea gives him on Luke 8:24, read the storm as the trial every believer meets and told his hearers to wake the Pilot.
Read the page on Ambrose of Milan
“You must remember that no one can pass from the course of this life without temptations, for temptation is the trial of faith. We are therefore subject to the storms of spiritual wickedness, but as watchful sailors we must awake the Pilot, who does not obey but commands the winds, who although He now no longer sleeps in the sleep of His own body, yet let us beware, lest through the sleep of our bodies He is to us asleep and at rest.”
Ambrose of Milan · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Luke 8:24 to 25Patristic
Kept in Perfect Peace
Isaiah ties perfect peace to the trust Jesus asked of His disciples.
You will keep in perfect peace the steadfast of mind, because he trusts in You.The prophet promises peace to the mind that trusts the LORD, the trust the disciples lacked in the boat.
Isaiah sets the promise inside a song for the land of Judah: "We have a strong city; salvation is established as its walls and ramparts" (Isaiah 26:1).
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901)
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
Keep Studying
In this value5