Bible Strands
Isaiah 40:17
All the nations are as nothing before Him; He regards them as nothingness and emptiness.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses Israel after detailing the insufficiency of earthly resources like Lebanon’s timber and livestock for worship. This declaration bridges the denial of created sufficiency and the immediate rhetorical challenge to find any likeness for God.
The words — The Hebrew כְּאַיִן (ke-'ayin) literally means "as nothing," while תֹהוּ (tohu) translates to "emptiness" or "formlessness." These terms describe how God evaluates all nations, stripping them of inherent weight or substance.
The thread — This theme of nations as vapor or nothingness recurs in Psalms 62:9, where the exalted are weighed and found to be but a vapor. It also echoes Daniel 4:34, where restored sanity leads to the acknowledgment of God’s supreme authority over all kingdoms.
Why it lands — The text demands a reader to abandon any attempt to measure God against human achievements or created resources. It requires the acceptance that divine sovereignty operates entirely outside the scope of earthly power or comparison.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
Cross-references
- Psalms 62:9 Lowborn men are but a vapor; the exalted are but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
- Daniel 4:34 But at the end of those days I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven, and my sanity was restored to me. Then I praised the Most High, and I honored and glorified Him who lives forever: “For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation.
- Isaiah 29:7 All the many nations going out to battle against Ariel—even all who war against her, laying siege and attacking her—will be like a dream, like a vision in the night,
- Job 25:6 how much less man, who is but a maggot, and the son of man, who is but a worm!”
- 2 Corinthians 12:11 I have become a fool, but you drove me to it. In fact, you should have commended me, since I am in no way inferior to those “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.