If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small.
Parallel translations
- WEB If you falter in the time of trouble, your strength is small.
- KJV If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
- BSB If you faint in the day of distress, how small is your strength!
- NKJV If you faint in the day of adversity, Your strength is small.
- NASB ¶If you show yourself lacking courage on the day of distress, Your strength is meager.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
If you collapse in adversity, your strength was small to begin with.
Overview
Trouble tests and reveals the true measure of one's strength and faith. Faltering in hardship exposes a weakness that prosperity had concealed. This drives believers to find their strength not in themselves but in the Lord, who supplies power in trial, so that even in weakness His strength is made perfect (2 Cor. 12:9; Phil. 4:13).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Isa 40:28–31Haven’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.
- Eph 3:13Therefore I ask that you may not lose heart at my troubles for you, which are your glory.
- Jer 51:46Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
- 1 Sam 27:1David said in his heart, “I will now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me any more in all the borders of Israel. So shall I escape out of his hand.”
- Heb 12:3–5For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls.
- Job 4:5But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled.
- Rev 2:3You have perseverance and have endured for my name’s sake, and have not grown weary.
- 2 Cor 4:1Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we don’t faint.
- Rev 2:13“I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. You hold firmly to my name, and didn’t deny my faith in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.
- John 4:8For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 24:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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