15 Bible Verses about Hard Labor

Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize. Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. However, they do it to receive a crown that will fade away, but we a crown that will never fade away. Therefore I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. read more.
Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

In struggling against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, read more.
I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

There I was—the heat consumed me by day and the frost by night, and sleep fled from my eyes. For 20 years I have worked in your household—14 years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks—and you have changed my wages 10 times! If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, certainly now you would have sent me off empty-handed. But God has seen my affliction and my hard work, and He issued His verdict last night.”

So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh. But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. They worked the Israelites ruthlessly read more.
and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they acted deceptively. They gathered provisions and took worn-out sacks on their donkeys and old wineskins, cracked and mended. They wore old, patched sandals on their feet and threadbare clothing on their bodies. Their entire provision of bread was dry and crumbly. read more.
They went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the men of Israel, “We have come from a distant land. Please make a treaty with us.” The men of Israel replied to the Hivites, “Perhaps you live among us. How can we make a treaty with you?” They said to Joshua, “We are your servants.”

Then Joshua asked them, “Who are you and where do you come from?” They replied to him, “Your servants have come from a far away land because of the reputation of the Lord your God. For we have heard of His fame, and all that He did in Egypt, and all that He did to the two Amorite kings beyond the Jordan—Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan, who was in Ashtaroth. So our elders and all the inhabitants of our land told us, ‘Take provisions with you for the journey; go and meet them and say, “We are your servants. Please make a treaty with us.”’ This bread of ours was warm when we took it from our houses as food on the day we left to come to you. But take a look, it is now dry and crumbly. These wineskins were new when we filled them, but look, they are cracked. And these clothes and sandals of ours are worn out from the extremely long journey.” Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but did not seek the Lord’s counsel. So Joshua established peace with them and made a treaty to let them live, and the leaders of the community swore an oath to them. Three days after making the treaty with them, they heard that the Gibeonites were their neighbors, living among them. So the Israelites set out and reached the Gibeonite cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim. But the Israelites did not attack them, because the leaders of the community had sworn an oath to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. Then the whole community grumbled against the leaders. All the leaders answered them, “We have sworn an oath to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we cannot touch them. This is how we will treat them: we will let them live, so that no wrath will fall on us because of the oath we swore to them.” They also said, “Let them live.” So the Gibeonites became woodcutters and water carriers for the whole community, as the leaders had promised them. Joshua summoned the Gibeonites and said to them, “Why did you deceive us by telling us you live far away from us, when in fact you live among us? Therefore you are cursed and will always be slaves—woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.” The Gibeonites answered him, “It was clearly communicated to your servants that the Lord your God had commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you. We greatly feared for our lives because of you, and that is why we did this. Now we are in your hands. Do to us whatever you think is right.” This is what Joshua did to them: he delivered them from the hands of the Israelites, and they did not kill them. On that day he made them woodcutters and water carriers—as they are today—for the community and for the Lord’s altar at the place He would choose.

Then she cried, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” When he awoke from his sleep, he said, “I will escape as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he was forced to grind grain in the prison.

The sleep of the worker is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep.

Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.

Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are forcing to work as slaves, and I have remembered My covenant.

This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon had imposed to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

There is profit in all hard work,
but endless talk leads only to poverty.

And He said to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of painful labor
all the days of your life.

The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he was forced to grind grain in the prison.

Young men labor at millstones;
boys stumble under loads of wood.