What Does Isaiah 41:6 Mean?
Each one helps his neighbor, and to his brother he says, Hold fast.
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
They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage.THE KEY
Here, courage is not a private achievement: help becomes strength when one person speaks it into another.
THE MEANING
Your strength does not have to begin inside you alone. Here, a neighbor’s help and a brother’s words work together: one person lends support, and another names strength back into them. Courage becomes something shared and carried between people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that courage is something each person must produce alone.
THE ROOT
חֲזָק
chazaq
GROWS FROM
חזק
To be strong or firm; to strengthen or make strong.
“Hold fast” in this verse is chazaq. English can make courage sound like a feeling kept inside one person, but חֲזָק (chazaq, “be strong”) is strength spoken to someone else. The same root can describe strengthening weak hands or holding fast, so encouragement here carries the sense of lending someone steadiness.
ALSO GROWS
chazzequ: Strengthen; make strong.
חַזְּקוּ
Isaiah 35:3 uses this form for strengthening weak hands, showing the same root moving strength from one person to another.
maḥazikim: Those holding fast; those taking hold.
מַחֲזִיקִים
Isaiah 56:4 uses this form for taking hold of the covenant; the root joins receiving strength with remaining firm.
יַעְזֹרוּ
ya'azoru
GROWS FROM
עזר
To help, support, or come to someone’s aid.
“helps” in this verse is ya'azoru. The verse pairs practical aid with spoken strength. עָזַר (azar, “help”) and חָזַק (chazaq, “strengthen”) remain distinct roots, yet together they show support arriving through both what someone does and what someone says.
ALSO GROWS
ezer: Help; a helper.
עֵזֶר
The action of helping shares its root with the word for a helper, linking the support given here with the person who gives it.
ya'azoru: They help.
יַעְזֹרוּ
This is the verb used in the verse: help is not abstract but something people do for one another.
THE PATTERN
Strength travels between people through concrete support and words that steady them.
But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.For if they fall, the one raises up the one joined to him. But woe to the one who falls with no second to gird him.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Strengthen the hands that have let go, and steady the knees that buckle.Isaiah 35:3 uses the same root חזק (chazaq, “strengthen”) as “Be of good courage” here. The shared word makes encouragement concrete: strength reaches weak hands and feeble knees, carrying the force of help that steadies another.
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