30 Bible Verses about Useless Labour

[If] I shall be [declared] guilty, why then should I labor in vain?

In all of your dwellings, the cities will be desolate and the high places will be ruined, so that your altars will be desolate and will suffer punishment. Your idols will be broken and will come to an end, and your incense altars will be cut down, and your works will be destroyed,

Look! [Is it] not from Yahweh of hosts that people labor for mere fire, and nations exhaust themselves for mere vanity?

Now David had said, "Surely {in vain} I guarded all that this fellow had in the desert. And nothing was missed of all that [was] his, but he returned evil against me in place of good!

Still our eyes failed, [looking for] our help in vain; in our watchtower, we kept watch for a nation that could not save.

And your strength shall be consumed {in vain}; and your land shall not give its produce, and the land's trees shall not give their fruit.

Thus says Yahweh of hosts: "The broad walls of Babylon will be utterly demolished, and her high gates will burn with fire, and [the] peoples will labor {for nothing}, and [the] nations {for fire}, and they will grow weary."

[It is] in vain for you who rise early [and] sit late, eating the bread of anxious toil, [when] thus he provides for his beloved in [his] sleep.

I {in turn} will do this to you: then I will summon onto you horror, the wasting disease, and the fever that wastes eyes and that drains away life; and you shall sow your seed {in vain}, and your enemies shall eat it.

for "in vain is the net scattered, in the sight of any {winged bird}."

[The] bellows are burned up, lead is consumed by fire. {In vain} {he keeps on refining}, but [the] wicked are not torn apart.

And you, devastated one, what [do] you do, that you put on crimson, that you adorn yourself [with] ornaments of gold, that you make your eyes look bigger with the eye make-up? In vain you beautify yourself. [Your] lovers reject you; they seek your life.

I am afraid [for] you, lest perhaps I have labored for you in vain!

But I myself said, "I have labored in vain; I have used up my strength for nothing and vanity! Nevertheless, my justice [is] with Yahweh, and my reward [is] with my God."

Obey your leaders and submit [to them], for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not [with] groaning, for this [would be] unprofitable for you.

For {Egyptians} help [with] vanity and emptiness, therefore I have called this one "Rahab, they [are] sitting."

"For {in vain} I have struck your children. They accepted no discipline. Your sword devoured your prophets, like a ravening lion.

and one of you should say to them, "Go in peace, keep warm and {eat well}," but does not give them what is necessary for the body, what [is] the benefit?

He will rededicate to Yahweh the days of his separation and bring a ram-lamb {in its first year} as a guilt offering. The former days [of his vow] will fall away because his separation was defiled.

And they will console you when you see their way and their deeds, and you will know that not for nothing I did all that I did in it," {declares} the Lord Yahweh.

And they will know that I [am] Yahweh; not {in vain} I spoke to bring to them this evil." '

Now I went up [there] because of a revelation and laid out to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles, but in private to the influential people, lest somehow I was running, or had run, in vain.

Because of this, I also, [when I] could endure [it] no longer, sent in order to know your faith, lest somehow the tempter tempted you and our labor should be in vain.

Have you suffered so many [things] for nothing--if indeed also [it was] for nothing?

They shall not labor for nothing, and they shall not give birth to horror, for they {shall be offspring blessed by} Yahweh, and their descendants with them.

But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you would not prove to be empty in this case, so that you may be prepared just as I was saying,

holding fast to the word of life, for a source of pride to me in the day of Christ, that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

Therefore I run in this way, not as [running] aimlessly; I box in this way, not as beating the air.

So then, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, [because you] know that your labor is not [in] vain in the Lord.

For [you] yourselves know, brothers, our reception with you, that it was not in vain,