to wear out with hard effort: to toil to the point of weariness, to grow weary, or to wear another out
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
Hebrew ties together two ideas that English keeps apart: the hard work and the tiredness it brings. To do this is at once to toil and to be worn down by toiling. So one word can cover a laborer straining at his task and a runner whose legs have given out.
The senses fan out from that center. Most often it means toiling, pouring out effort, and the prophets return again and again to labor that comes to nothing, work spent for wind or fire. From the same idea comes the plain state of being spent: eyes worn out from weeping, a hand too tired to hold a sword. And because effort can be laid on others, it can mean to wear someone out or drive them to hard labor.
Throughout, the word carries a note of cost. It is not neutral activity but effort that leaves a person diminished, which is why it so often stands beside the language of fainting and having no rest. Its most famous use is the promise that the God who made the ends of the earth never grows weary, while even the strongest young men do.
Nuances
1ato labor hard, to spend great effort, often for a goal that yields nothing
the weariness is specifically the product of exertion, of having toiled or struggled until strength gives outPsa 6:62Sa 23:10
Both
both describe a person whose strength is spentIsa 40:30Isa 57:10
Only weary
English weary can mean merely bored or fed up with something, with no physical effort behind it
“faint”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“toil”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How yaga differs from similar Hebrew words
יָעֵףto faint or grow faint, focusing on the collapse of strength itself; this word adds the exhausting labor that brings a person to that point, and the two stand side by side in Isaiah 40.
Names the toil itself, the hard effort poured into a task, so the weariness is the cost of work done (often work that comes to nothing).Jos 24:13Isa 49:4Pro 23:4
Reaches beyond one's own fatigue to wearing another out, exhausting someone's patience with words or demands.Mal 2:17Isa 43:24
Both
Set side by side as a matched pair for total exhaustion, the point where all strength is spent.Isa 40:31
Both describe effort emptied out for nothing, strength poured into what only feeds the fire.Jer 51:58
Names the body giving way, strength failing and a person growing faint from hunger or exertion, the collapse rather than the labor that caused it.Isa 44:12
Marks the exhaustion of movement and pursuit, tiring oneself out in the effort of the chase.Jer 2:24
עָמַלlabor felt as burden and trouble, the grievous drudgery of work; this word stresses instead the wearying exertion and its cost in spent strength.
Weighs labor by the gain it does or does not yield: the toil whose whole point is the profit left over, and whether any remains.Ecc 1:3Ecc 2:11
Names the toil poured into a possession, the thing worked for and then handed on or lost to someone who never sweated for it.Ecc 2:21Jon 4:10
לָאָהto be worn out to the point of being unable to go on; this word names the toiling and tiring itself, while that one names the exhausted incapacity it can reach.
Points to the hard labor itself, the toil a person pours out, so the weariness is the cost of work done rather than a collapse of strength.Jos 24:13Pro 23:4Isa 62:8
Names bodily fatigue from sustained exertion, the muscles or the voice giving out after prolonged effort.2Sa 23:10Psa 6:6Psa 69:3
Both
Both can picture a person wearing himself out to no purpose, effort spent on what cannot deliver.Isa 47:12Isa 16:12
The verb reaches past working to the exhaustion it brings: growing weary, fainting, being worn out, even from weeping rather than from work.Isa 40:28Isa 40:31Psa 6:62Sa 23:10
Both
Both name hard, wearying labor: work that costs real strength and effort.Gen 31:42Isa 49:4
The noun often names not the toil itself but its PRODUCE: the crops, earnings, or property that labor yields.Deu 28:33Psa 128:2Isa 45:14Jer 20:5
yaga in the other biblical languages
κοπιάωGreek“to labor”the New Testament verb that likewise fuses hard labor with the weariness it brings, as in the invitation to all who labor and are heavy laden; it renders this Hebrew idea closely.
Weariness that comes from grief and crying out rather than from work: a person worn down in body and spirit by suffering.Psa 6:6Psa 69:3Jer 45:3
Toil aimed at gaining wealth or land, often carrying the sober warning that the gain is not secure or is simply handed over as a gift.Jos 24:13Pro 23:4Ecc 10:15
Both
Hard labor carried to the point of physical exhaustion, where the work itself wears the body out.2Sa 23:10Jhn 4:6
Labor that comes to nothing: effort poured out in vain.Isa 49:4Isa 65:23Gal 4:11Php 2:16
The New Testament's honored word for the demanding work of gospel ministry: those who labor in the Lord, and elders who labor in preaching and teaching.Rom 16:6Rom 16:121Co 15:10Col 1:291Ti 5:17
Ordinary work for one's living, held up as a model to imitate (or, in the lilies that do not toil, as the thing God's care makes needless).Mat 6:28Act 20:35Eph 4:282Ti 2:6
What scholars say about yaga
The standard lexica (BDB; HALOT; DCH) treat יגע as a single root spanning strenuous labor and the weariness it produces. The qal covers both "toil, labour (often in vain)" and "grow weary, be faint," while the causative stems (hiphil and piel) mean "to weary, wear out, make to toil." The pairing with יעף "to faint" in Isaiah 40:28-31 is the classic display of the fused labour-and-exhaustion sense, and TWOT notes the recurrent prophetic motif of labour spent in vain.