BE SILENT — an imperative whose root appears nowhere else in biblical Hebrew, so its meaning is read from the verb beside it: hasket u-shema, be silent and hear, at Deuteronomy 27:9. ⭐ It stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible. The same consonants spell the booths of the festival at Deuteronomy 16:13, which is a different word. ⚠ The shelf guesses from context, and the guesses move across the centuries: the KJV and Geneva read ‘Take heed’, the Douay ‘Attend’, the ASV ‘Keep silence’, the NWT 1984 ‘Keep silent’, the NIV ‘Be silent’; the RV 1909 reads «Atiende» and its RV60 revision «Guarda silencio», which the NVI and both TNM editions share. The older versions heard attention; the newer hear silence. → first discussed at Deut 27:9