🕊️WEB · Isaiah 40:30
What does Isaiah 40:30 mean?
"Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall;"
— Isaiah 40:30 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel, “My way is hidden from Yahweh, and the justice due me is disregarded by my God?”
Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, The Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might.
Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall;
But those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.
Explanation
Isaiah 40:30 says something simple on the surface: even the strongest, most energetic people in society—young men and women in the prime of physical life—grow tired, faint, and ultimately collapse under strain. The verse names the group we would least expect to fail. Children and youths are typically the picture of stamina and resilience, so when Isaiah says even they falter, he is making the strongest possible statement about the universal limits of human strength.
This verse comes from the latter half of Isaiah, addressed to the people of Judah who were either facing exile in Babylon or already living through it. They were a discouraged, weary people who felt abandoned by God, wondering if their suffering meant God had forgotten them or lost control of history. Isaiah 40 opens with words of comfort ("Comfort, comfort my people," v.1) and moves into a majestic description of God's incomparable greatness—his power over nations, his knowledge of the stars, his sovereignty over all creation. Verse 30 sits inside this larger argument, functioning as a contrast point: human strength, even at its peak, is limited and temporary.
Theologically, the verse exists to highlight human weakness so that God's power can shine even brighter in the very next verse (v.31), which promises that "those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength... they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint." The pairing is deliberate. Isaiah wants his audience to feel the reality of their exhaustion—physical, emotional, spiritual—and then to see that God is not subject to the same limitations. Where human
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