Biblion Bible Commentary
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Peace, Be Still
Matthew 8:23-27
23 When he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. · WEB
The storm is Mark's; what Matthew changes is the order of the rebuke — disciples first, then the weather.
Behold, a violent storm came up on the sea, so much that the boat was covered with the waves; but he was asleep Matthew 8:24.
The account is told at length in the earlier Gospel Mark 4:35–41, with the cushion in the stern and the reproach don't you care that we are dying? Matthew's version is shorter and two differences repay attention.
The first is the disciples' words. Where the earlier telling has an accusation, this one has a prayer: save us, Lord! We are dying! Matthew 8:25 — three words that are the shape of every desperate petition in the book, addressed to him as Lord rather than as a sleeping passenger.
He said to them, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" Then he got up, rebuked the wind and the sea Matthew 8:26.
The second is the sequence. In the earlier account the storm is stilled and the question comes afterward; here he speaks to the men first and calms the sea second. They are addressed while the water is still coming over the side, which makes the rebuke sharper and the point plainer — the fear is being treated as the problem in its own right, not merely as an understandable reaction to a real danger that will shortly be removed.
O you of little faith is Matthew's own phrase, used five times in this Gospel and almost nowhere else. It is not a dismissal; it is what he calls people who have some faith and are not using it, and it is always said to disciples rather than to outsiders.
"What kind of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" Matthew 8:27.
The question the sequence is built to raise is left standing. Anyone who knew the Scriptures had an answer available — the one who stills the storm and hushes the waves is God, in a psalm about sailors crying out in trouble Psalms 107:28–29 — and the disciples do not say it. In this Gospel the sentence is finished a few chapters later, in the same boat, when they worship and say you are truly the Son of God Matthew 14:33.
settled What this mark means