A SHAKING — from seiō, to shake; the ordinary Greek word for an EARTHQUAKE, and the root of English 'seismic'. ⚠ Matthew 8:24 uses it of the storm on the lake, where Mark 4:37 and Luke 8:23 both use lailaps, the ordinary word for a squall. The choice looks deliberate, because Matthew uses seismos twice more at the hinges of his Gospel: the shaking at the crucifixion (27:51, with the cognate verb of the earth) and the one at the empty tomb (28:2). So on Matthew's page the sea does what the earth does at the death and the resurrection — which is why this translation reads 'a great shaking' rather than smoothing it to 'storm' or 'tempest', both of which are fair renderings of a squall and lose the word he actually wrote. → first discussed at Matt 8:24