Bible verses about not giving up

Galatians 6:9 has two words for giving up

Read the verse in the list above in both translations. The first half, let us not be weary, is enkakeo (1573), which Thayer’s lexicon glosses “to be utterly spiritless, to be wearied out, exhausted”. The end, the King James’s if we faint not and the modern if we don’t give up, is a different verb, ekluo (1590): Thayer gives “to loose, unloose” and then “to dissolve; metaphorically, to weaken, relax, exhaust”. The first occurs six times in the New Testament and the second five, and this is the only verse with both.

The commentators read the pair as two stages. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, following Bengel: “Weary of well-doing refers to the will; ‘faint not’ to relaxation of the powers.” Meyer: “He who loses moral courage loses also moral strength.” The Expositor’s Greek Testament hears the harvest in the verse, the first word for farmers “tempted to slacken their exertions by weariness of prolonged labour”, the second for “reapers overcome by heat and toil” (commentaries on Galatians 6:9). Losing heart, and then running out.

English hides the difference in both directions. The King James says faint not four times, and three of them (2 Corinthians 4:1 and 4:16, Ephesians 3:13) are the first verb, while Galatians 6:9 is the second. The modern rendering says give up in Luke 18:1, in the list above, where the Greek is the first verb, and in Galatians 6:9, where it is the second. Two Greek words, one English phrase in each translation, and the toggles cannot tell you which is which. One more thing the King James lets you count: be not weary in well doing is word for word the same in 2 Thessalonians 3:13, also in the list, and Matthew Poole notes “we have the same precept”. Paul said it twice.

The crowd Jesus would not send home hungry

Two of the five uses of the second verb are not about the spiritual life at all. They are Matthew 15:32, in the list, and Mark’s account of the same day:

And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.Mark 8:3 · King James Version

A crowd that has been with him three days with nothing to eat, and the word is the one for what would happen to them on the road home. The Cambridge Bible makes the connection on Galatians 6:9 itself: “The same word is used, Matthew 15:32, of the physical exhaustion produced by long abstinence from food.” So under if we faint not is a body that has gone too long without eating. In Matthew and Mark the answer to that is not a speech about perseverance. What follows is the feeding of the four thousand.

Hebrews 12:3, in the list, uses the same word for the mind: the King James has lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds, the modern rendering fainting in your souls. If what you have is less a wish to quit than plain exhaustion, our verses for feeling overwhelmed are built on the Hebrew word for fainting, and our verses for sleep are the other half of the answer the crowd got.

The bruised reed, and then the servant

Isaiah 42:3-4, in the list, is two verses that read in English like two separate thoughts: gentleness with the weak, then stamina in the one being gentle. In Hebrew they are tied together. He shall not fail is the verb from the same root as the dimly burning wick, and nor be discouraged is the verb of the bruised reed. The Cambridge Bible: “The words fail and be discouraged correspond in the original to ‘dimly burning’ and ‘broken’ in Isaiah 42:3.” Ellicott renders the second verse “He shall not burn dimly nor be crushed”, and the Pulpit Commentary adds: “He will himself show no signs of that weakness which he will compassionate in others.” Keil and Delitzsch agree, and record that Hengstenberg derived the second verb from a different root, “to run”, and read it as “He will not be rash or impetuous”; they reject that (commentaries on Isaiah 42:4). Both of our translations say fail and discouraged, so this is one of the places where the toggles cannot show you the thing. Matthew quotes the passage of Jesus (Matthew 12:18-21).

One more Hebrew word on this page has a page of its own on this site. In 2 Chronicles 15:7, in the list, let not your hands be weak is raphah (interlinear), the verb of Psalm 46:10’s be still, which our page on Psalm 46:10 explains as loosening a grip. The modern rendering here is closer to it: Don’t let your hands be slack. Same verb, opposite instructions: in the psalm, loosen your grip; here, do not let your hands go slack yet.

A prophet who tried to stop

Jeremiah 20:9 is the most honest verse on this page. He decides to stop speaking, and finds he cannot: the King James has I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay, the modern rendering I am weary with holding it in. I can’t. (interlinear). Five verses later in the same chapter he curses the day he was born, a passage our birthday page prints. Nothing in the chapter tidies that up. The verse is not a promise that you will feel like carrying on. It is a man who did not feel like it and kept going anyway.

The man who left, and was asked for

On the first missionary journey, one of the party went home:

Now Paul and his company set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. John departed from them and returned to Jerusalem.Acts 13:13 · World English Bible

Why, the text does not say. Barnes: “Why he departed from them is unknown.” Ellicott: “We are left to conjecture the motives of this departure”, and he offers fear of the journey inland, or his mother in Jerusalem, as guesses (commentaries on Acts 13:13). When the next journey was planned, Paul would not have him:

But Paul didn’t think that it was a good idea to take with them someone who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia, and didn’t go with them to do the work.Acts 15:38 · World English Bible

The next verse, in the King James, is the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: Paul and Barnabas split over it. Years later Colossians 4:10 tells a church that if Mark comes, receive him, and 2 Timothy 4:11, in the list, is Paul asking for him by name: he is profitable to me for the ministry. The word is euchrestos (2173), and it occurs three times in the New Testament. One is about a vessel. The other is about Onesimus, a slave who had left his master and was being sent back to him:

Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me:Philemon 1:11 · King James Version

Ellicott notes that the name Onesimus itself means “useful” and that “It is hardly possible not to see in this passage a play on words” (commentaries on Philemon 1:11). So the two people Paul calls useful are a slave who had left his master and a man who had gone home. Neither description is taken back. They are just not the last thing said.

Psalm 27:13 is a sentence that breaks off

Open the King James on Psalm 27:13 in the list: I had fainted, unless I had believed. Barnes: “The words ‘I had fainted’ are supplied by the translators”. The Hebrew begins with lule, “unless”, and never says what would have happened (interlinear). The Pulpit Commentary calls it an aposiopesis: “He shrinks from stating the consequences”. The modern rendering reads it differently again: I am still confident of this.

The reason the translations can split is the word itself. The Cambridge Bible: “The word for unless is marked with dots in the Massoretic text as probably spurious.” Keil and Delitzsch describe the same dots, “three points above” and “four below, according to the Masora”, and defend the word as “indispensably necessary” and “even attested by the lxx” (commentaries on Psalm 27:13). This is close to the manuscript kind of question: the scribes who copied the line marked a word in it as doubtful. We are not going to settle it. What is not in doubt is where the sentence ends, the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. The Cambridge Bible takes that as this life on earth, and the next verse, 27:14, is on our encouragement page.

What this page is not

• It is not a promise about timing. Galatians 6:9 says in due season, which the Cambridge Bible glosses “in God’s own appointed season”, adding “whether sooner or later”. Our verses about patience are about the waiting.
• It is not a rule against ever stopping. Mark went home, Paul and Barnabas parted, and Jeremiah tried to. The passages here are about not losing heart in doing good. If what you are being told not to give up on is something that is hurting you, that is a different question, and this page does not answer it.
• It is not about giving up on life. If that is where you are, please talk to someone today. In the US you can call or text 988 at any hour (the 988 Lifeline), and the National Institute of Mental Health explains depression and the treatments that help.