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Does Isaiah 40:31 Apply to General Patient Waiting in Difficulty?

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Isaiah 40:31

The situation

Someone you love is sick. Or your prayer for a job has gone unanswered for months. Or grief has not lifted. In each case someone offers Isaiah 40:31 as encouragement: keep waiting on the Lord, and your strength will be renewed. The verse appears on hospital cards, in graduation speeches, in marathon training mantras, and in pastoral letters of comfort. The popular application treats the verse as a general promise to any individual believer waiting through any difficulty.

What the text actually says

Isaiah 40:31 — BSB

but those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 — KJV

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Original language

Hebrew qoyei YHWH (קֹוֵי יְהוָה) — 'those who wait/hope in the LORD' — from the verb qavah, which in Hebrew covers both waiting and hoping; they are not distinguished as separate activities. Yachalifu koach (יַחֲלִיפוּ כֹחַ) — 'they shall exchange/renew strength' — uses the verb chalaph, which means 'to change, exchange, substitute' more than simply 'top up.' The waiting one's depleted strength is exchanged for a different strength.

Where the application holds

Where the application stretches

The chapter as a whole

Isaiah 40 opens what scholars often call Deutero-Isaiah — the second main section of the book, addressed to Jews in Babylonian exile. The opening of the chapter is unmistakable:

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her forced labor has been completed; her iniquity has been pardoned.” (Isaiah 40:1-2, BSB)

The chapter then builds the second-exodus picture: a voice calling in the wilderness for a highway to be prepared (40:3), every valley raised and every mountain levelled (40:4), the LORD coming with power to bring his people home (40:10-11), the comparative trivia of the nations (40:15-17), and finally the LORD’s response to those who are tired:

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength…” (40:29-31, BSB)

The verse is the answer to a community that has been worn down by seventy years of exile and is being told the return is now imminent. The eagle’s-wings, the running without growing weary, the walking without fainting — all of these describe the community’s journey home.

For the /for/ entry on waiting and the broader vocabulary of waiting in biblical Hebrew, see those entries.

For the full textual analysis