What Does Isaiah 40:29 Mean?
He gives power to the faint, and to those without might he multiplies strength.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.THE KEY
God’s increase begins exactly where your own strength is absent.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you at the point of depletion: God gives power to the faint and increases strength where might is lacking. Your lack is not described as a barrier to that giving; it is the place the verse names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you must first recover your own strength before God can give you power.
THE ROOT
עָצְמָה
ʿotzmah
GROWS FROM
עָצַם
ʿatsam
To be mighty or to grow numerous.
The word rendered “strength” comes from a root that also describes what is mighty or numerous, and shares its consonants with the word for bone. Strength here carries a sense of substance and structure, and the verse says it increases even where human might is lacking.
ALSO GROWS
ʿetsem: Bone; also self or essence in biblical usage.
עֶצֶם
This branch gives strength a structural depth: the same root names the body’s hard framework.
ʿatsum: Mighty; numerous.
עָצוּם
Strength and abundance share this root, echoing the verse’s movement from lack toward increase.
ʿotzmah: Strength or might.
עָצְמָה
This is the word used in the verse, linking the promise of increased strength to the root’s sense of might.
THE PATTERN
Divine strength is named as present where human strength fails.
My flesh and my heart run out, and God is the rock of my heart and my portion for the ages.And he said to me, "My favor is enough for you, for strength is carried to its end in weakness." Most gladly, then, I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the strength of the Anointed One may pitch its tent over me.THE THREAD
But those who wait upon the LORD exchange their strength; they rise on wings like eagles; they run and do not tire; they walk and do not faint.The word for “power” in this verse and “strength” in the next is כֹּחַ (koach, power or strength). The same word given to the faint is what the next verse says is renewed, carrying the movement from depletion into continued walking.
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