to be worn out: to spend one's strength or patience to the point of not being able to go on, or to wear another out that way
This is not the mild tiredness of a long day. It names the moment when a person's strength, or willingness, is spent and there is nothing left to give. The word appears only nineteen times in the Hebrew Bible, and most of those are in the prophets, where it marks the outer edge of what someone can take.
Three shades set it apart from the other Hebrew words for tiredness:
- effort poured into something that comes to nothing (the men struck blind at Lot's door wear themselves out and still cannot find it)
- being worn down so far that a person simply cannot do the thing any longer (the lazy man too far gone to lift food from the dish to his mouth)
- patience worn through, so that someone has finally had enough (God has had enough of festivals kept without honesty)
The word also runs the other direction: one party wears the other out. That is what gives Isaiah 7:13 its sting, where the royal house is told that it exhausts God the way it exhausts everyone around it. Nearby stand יָגַע, the tiredness that comes of hard labor, and יָעַף, the fainting of spent strength. This word keeps its eye on the limit itself: the effort that was for nothing, or the endurance that is finally used up.
Nuances
What the verb means in Eliphaz's opening question to Job.
- contestedIt asks whether Job will take offense, a polite courtroom-style approach to a painful subject.; Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday, 1965)
- contestedIt asks whether a single word will tire Job out, while granting that vexation is also in earshot.; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Word, 1989)
- contestedThe overlap between wearying and offending is deliberate, and Eliphaz exploits it.; John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1988)
Whether God being wearied by Israel's festivals describes real divine feeling or renders a judicial verdict.
- contestedThe phrase is a fixed way of speaking about endurance under a burden, and here it is the strongest expression of divine feeling in these oracles.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12, Continental Commentaries (Fortress, 1991); Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (Harper & Row, 1962)
- contestedThe language is a covenant verdict rather than a statement about God growing tired.; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, Old Testament Library (Westminster John Knox, 2001)
Whether the phrase containing the verb is original to Ezekiel 24:12, and what it means if it is.
- contestedThe Hebrew line stands, and it says that the pot has exhausted all the effort spent on it.; Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1997)
- contestedThe phrase is a later explanatory addition and should be set aside, since the ancient Greek version lacks it.; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1979); BDB, s.v. לאה