29 Bible Verses about Useless Labour

You will not let me be clear of sin! why then do I take trouble for nothing?

In all your living-places the towns will become broken walls, and the high places made waste; so that your altars may be broken down and made waste, and your images broken and ended, and so that your sun-images may be cut down and your works rubbed out.

See, is it not the pleasure of the Lord of armies that the peoples are working for the fire and using themselves up for nothing?

Now David had said, What was the use of my taking care of this man's goods in the waste land, so that there was no loss of anything which was his? he has only given me back evil for good.

Our eyes are still wasting away in looking for our false help: we have been watching for a nation unable to give salvation.

And your strength will be used up without profit; for your land will not give her increase and the trees of the field will not give their fruit.

The Lord of armies has said: The wide walls of Babylon will be completely uncovered and her high doorways will be burned with fire; so peoples keep on working for nothing, and the weariness of nations comes to an end in the smoke.

This will I do to you: I will put fear in your hearts, even wasting disease and burning pain, drying up the eyes and making the soul feeble, and you will get no profit from your seed, for your haters will take it for food.

Truly, to no purpose is the net stretched out before the eyes of the bird:

The blower is blowing strongly, the lead is burned away in the fire: they go on heating the metal to no purpose, for the evil-doers are not taken away.

And you, when you are made waste, what will you do? Though you are clothed in red, though you make yourself beautiful with ornaments of gold, though you make your eyes wide with paint, it is for nothing that you make yourself fair; your lovers have no more desire for you, they have designs on your life.

I am in fear of you, that I may have been working for you to no purpose.

And I said, I have undergone weariness for nothing, I have given my strength for no purpose or profit: but still the Lord will take up my cause, and my God will give me my reward.

Give ear to those who are rulers over you, and do as they say: for they keep watch over your souls, ready to give an account of them; let them be able to do this with joy and not with grief, because that would be of no profit to you.

For there is no use or purpose in the help of Egypt: so I have said about her, She is Rahab, who has come to an end.

I gave your children blows to no purpose; they got no good from training: your sword has been the destruction of your prophets, like a death-giving lion.

And one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warm and full of food; but you do not give them the things of which their bodies have need, what profit is there in this?

And he will give to the Lord his days of being separate, offering a he-lamb of the first year as an offering for error: but the earlier days will be a loss, because he became unclean.

They will give you comfort when you see their ways and their doings: and you will be certain that not for nothing have I done all the things I have done in it, says the Lord.

And they will be certain that I am the Lord: not for nothing did I say that I would do this evil to them.

And I went up by revelation; and I put before them the good news which I was preaching among the Gentiles, but privately before those who were of good name, so that the work which I was or had been doing might not be without effect.

For this reason, when I was no longer able to keep quiet, I sent to get news of your faith, fearing that you might be tested by the Evil One and that our work might come to nothing.

Did you undergo such a number of things to no purpose? if it is in fact to no purpose.

Their work will not be for nothing, and they will not give birth to children for destruction; for they are a seed to whom the Lord has given his blessing, and their offspring will be with them.

But I have sent the brothers, so that the good things we said about you may be seen to be true, and that, as I said, you may be ready:

Offering the word of life; so that I may have glory in you in the day of Christ, because my running was not for nothing and my work was not without effect.

So then I am running, not uncertainly; so I am fighting, not as one who gives blows in the air:

For this cause, my dear brothers, be strong in purpose and unmoved, ever giving yourselves to the work of the Lord, because you are certain that your work is not without effect in the Lord.

For you yourselves, brothers, are conscious that our coming among you was not without effect: