📖 Biblical Definition
A biblical virtue, not a personality trait. Quietness in Scripture is the inner repose under God that produces strength (in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, Isa 30:15), the absence of frantic striving, and the settled tongue under provocation. Peter calls the meek and quiet spirit the ornament of the wife — the unfading beauty God prizes (1 Pet 3:4). The opposite is not extroversion or volume; the opposite is anxious striving, the brawling spirit of Prov 21:9, the continual dripping of Prov 27:15. Quietness is available to the loud-voiced and the soft-voiced alike. It is a posture under God, not a decibel rating.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Biblical virtue: inner repose under God that produces strength and a settled tongue; opposite of brawling and anxious striving.
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QUIETNESS, n. The biblical virtue of inner repose under God. Hebrew shaqat (rest, quiet); Greek hesychia (stillness, quiet). Named in Isa 30:15 (in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength), in 1 Pet 3:4 (the meek and quiet spirit), and in 1 Tim 2:11-12 (women learning in quietness). Distinguished from silence or introversion; this is the spiritual posture under God that produces strength, settled judgment, and the absence of frantic striving.
📖 Key Scripture
Isaiah 30:15 — "For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."
1 Peter 3:3-4 — "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning... But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price."
1 Thessalonians 4:11 — "And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we have commanded you."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Quietness reframed as passive, repressed, or doormat; the strength dimension lost entirely.
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Modern culture reads quietness as weakness, repression, or the trauma response of a doormat. Scripture reads it as strength — explicitly. Isaiah pairs quietness with confidence as the source of strength. Peter calls the meek and quiet spirit a great-price ornament. These are not weakness words. They are strength words for a different kind of strength than the world recognizes.
The Christian wife and the Christian man both need this virtue, though Scripture especially names it as the wife's particular ornament. It is the opposite of the reviling-wife pattern of Proverbs — the continual dripping, the brawling tongue, the household-corroding contention. The recovery of quietness is not a recovery of silence; it is a recovery of strength-under-God. The wife who has it can disagree with her husband privately and respectfully, can raise hard questions, can appeal — and her appeal will have weight precisely because her ordinary mode is not the continual dripping.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Hebrew shaqat; Greek hesychia; both name strength-under-God rather than mere silence.
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['Hebrew', 'H8252', 'shaqat', 'to be quiet, undisturbed, at rest']
['Greek', 'G2271', 'hesychia', 'quietness, stillness (1 Tim 2:11)']
['Greek', 'G2272', 'hesychios', 'quiet, peaceable (1 Pet 3:4)']
Usage
"Quietness is strength-under-God, not silence and not weakness."
"It produces a settled tongue, especially under provocation."
"1 Pet 3:4 calls it the wife's unfading ornament of great price."