2 Chronicles 15:7: the word that kept a king from letting go
7But as for you, be strengthened, and do not let your hands be weakened. For there will be a reward for your work.”
The central image is hands: do not let them be weakened. That is the gesture of someone letting go of what they were holding, and it is what the prophet is trying to prevent.
Short answer
2 Chronicles 15:7 closes the prophet Azariah’s message to King Asa with two imperatives and a reason: take strength, keep your hands from going slack, because the work you are doing has a reward waiting. The line follows a description of a period when nothing seemed to function.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
The sentence is short and serves as the close of a long, bleak speech. The prophet has just described a time with no priest, no teaching and no law, with city destroying city. It is after all that that he tells them to keep going.
Where this verse appears
Asa was king of Judah and had come back from a military victory. The prophet Azariah goes out to meet him and recalls a stretch of history in which the people had no direction, and how, when they sought God in their distress, he was found by them.
The next verse records the effect: Asa listened, was strengthened and acted — he removed the idols from the region and repaired the altar. The word worked because it produced work, not only encouragement.
What it says
The image of hands going weak is concrete and worth more than a metaphor for feeling. This is not about losing faith or feeling low: it is about letting go of what was being carried. The line addresses the gesture, not the mood.
The reward mentioned is unqualified. It does not say when, or how, or how much. It states that the work is not lost, and nothing beyond that — considerably less than people usually take from here, and considerably more useful to anyone in the middle of a long job.
A frank word on the popular reading: the verse promises no visible result and no success for the project. It was spoken to a king about to face internal resistance while removing entrenched practices, and what it guarantees is that the effort has worth, not that it will be recognised soon.
What to do with it today
It fits the middle of things, which is where hands go weak — the long treatment, the teenage child, the project that has lost its novelty and not yet produced anything. The line does not ask for fresh enthusiasm. It asks that you not let go today of what you are still holding.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, my hands are tired and I have thought about letting go. Hold them with me one more day, and let what I am doing not be wasted. Amen.