Who is being told to be still?

That is the question the famous verse turns on, and almost no one asks it. Here is the verse; the answer follows in under a minute of reading.

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10 · New International Version

The verse is a command to stop, not a description of a mood. Matthew Henry reads it as addressed to two groups at once: God's enemies, told to quit raging because opposing him is futile, and God's people, told to quit trembling and to leave the defence of God's honour and interests to God himself.

Everything else on this site unpacks that answer, briefly. What the command asks each audience to stop doing. Why the same sentence lands on both sides of a battlefield. Why it sits at the end of a war psalm, and the questions readers keep asking about it.

The brevity is deliberate. The point of this verse is short; a page about it should be too.