Isaiah 40:29 in the King James Version reads, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” Its meaning sits inside a chapter that is deliberately shaped to comfort people who feel worn down by fear, exile, loss, and the long strain of waiting. Isaiah 40 opens with God’s own call, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” and it proceeds to lift the eyes of the hearer away from immediate weakness and toward the unrivaled greatness of the LORD who rules, creates, and shepherds. Verse 29 is one of the chapter’s most intimate turns: after declaring God’s supremacy over nations, rulers, and the whole order of creation, the prophet applies that grandeur to human frailty. The God who is high and unsearchable is not distant from weakness; his greatness expresses itself as giving.

The verse turns on two portraits of human inability. “The faint” are those who are exhausted, spent, and ready to collapse under the weight of life and circumstance. “Them that have no might” are not merely tired but powerless, those who have reached the end of their resources and cannot generate what is needed by willpower, strategy, or self-repair. The language is intentionally absolute: it describes people at the end of themselves. In that setting, the verse is not a compliment to human resilience but a declaration that strength can come from outside the self. The subject is “He,” the LORD, and the verbs are his: “giveth” and “increaseth.” The grammar makes the theology plain: the supply of power is God’s action, and the increase of strength is God’s continuing provision.

The immediate context intensifies the significance. In the verses just before, Isaiah declares that the LORD “fainteth not, neither is weary” and that there is “no searching of his understanding.” That contrast is central to Isaiah 40:29. Humans faint; God does not. Humans become weary; God is never diminished. Humans cannot always understand what is happening to them; God’s understanding cannot be traced out or exhausted. Verse 29 then functions like a bridge between God’s inexhaustible being and the believer’s exhausted condition. Because God does not run out, he can give to those who have run out. Because his strength is not limited, it can be “increased” in those who have “no might,” meaning that the one who is empty can be filled, and the one who is powerless can be supplied with real capacity.

The themes are therefore comfort, dependence, and divine generosity. The verse teaches that weakness is not a disqualifier for receiving God’s help; it is the very condition named as the recipient of it. In a chapter addressing discouraged hearts—people tempted to think they have been forgotten or that God has measured them as too small—Isaiah 40:29 asserts the opposite: the LORD’s attention bends toward the faint. Strength in this verse is not portrayed as mere emotional uplift but as “power” and “might,” words that imply ability for what must be borne, endured, obeyed, or completed. It is a promise that God’s resources can become operative in the life of someone who cannot, by nature, carry the load.

There is also symbolism in the contrast between human limitation and God’s creative dominion running through Isaiah 40. The chapter speaks of the Creator who measures waters, weighs mountains, and calls the host of heaven by name. That cosmic imagery is not inserted to intimidate but to reassure: the One who governs immensities can certainly govern the needs of a single weary person. The same voice that commands galaxies can sustain a faint soul. The verse thereby symbolizes a reversal of scale: the infinite God applies infinite sufficiency to finite weakness. What seems small—one person’s fatigue—matters to the One who holds the universe, and what seems impossible—renewed strength—becomes possible because it is not produced by the faint but given by the LORD.

Isaiah 40:29 also prepares the way for the famous assurance that follows, that those who “wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength.” Verse 29 is the reason that renewal can happen at all. Waiting is not passive resignation but a posture of trustful dependence on the God who gives. The faint do not renew themselves; God gives power. Those with “no might” do not discover hidden reserves; God increases strength. In that light, the significance of the verse is that it identifies God’s character as a giver of sustaining power precisely where human strength fails, and it anchors hope not in changing circumstances but in the unwearied God who supplies what the weary lack.