Bible Strands
Isaiah 40:30
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Isaiah addresses exiled Israel, contrasting universal human exhaustion with divine sustenance. This declaration immediately follows Yahweh’s promise to empower the faint and precedes the promise to renew those who wait on Him.
The words — The Hebrew uses יִֽעֲפ֥וּ (yi'afu) and יִגָ֑עוּ (yiga'u) to describe youths and young men growing weary. It pairs these with כָּשֵׁׁלוּ (kashelu) to show that even the physically strongest stumble and fall.
The thread — The exhaustion of human capability appears in Amos 2:14, where the swift cannot escape and the mighty cannot save themselves. Psalm 33:16 similarly records that no warrior is delivered by great strength.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that natural vigor inevitably fails without divine intervention. It prepares the reader to accept that sustained strength comes only from waiting on the Lord.
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
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
Cross-references
- Amos 2:14 Escape will fail the swift, the strong will not prevail by his strength, and the mighty will not save his life.
- Psalms 34:10 Young lions go lacking and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
- Psalms 33:16 No king is saved by his vast army; no warrior is delivered by his great strength.
- Ecclesiastes 9:11 I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all.
- Isaiah 9:17 Therefore the Lord takes no pleasure in their young men; He has no compassion on their fatherless and widows. For every one of them is godless and wicked, and every mouth speaks folly. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.
- Isaiah 13:18 Their bows will dash young men to pieces; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; they will not look with pity on the children.
- Psalms 39:5 You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah
- Jeremiah 6:11 But I am full of the LORD’s wrath; I am tired of holding it back. “Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the young men gathered together. For both husband and wife will be captured, the old and the very old alike.
- Jeremiah 9:21 For death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the town squares.