30 Bible Verses about Useless Labour

“I am accounted wicked,
Why then should I toil in vain?

In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out.

“Is it not indeed from the Lord of hosts
That peoples toil for fire,
And nations grow weary for nothing?

Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have guarded all that this man has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; and he has returned me evil for good.

Yet our eyes failed,
Looking for help was useless;
In our watching we have watched
For a nation that could not save.

Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.

Thus says the Lord of hosts,
“The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed
And her high gates will be set on fire;
So the peoples will toil for nothing,
And the nations become exhausted only for fire.”

It is vain for you to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread of painful labors;
For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.

I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.

Indeed, it is useless to spread the baited net
In the sight of any bird;

The bellows blow fiercely,
The lead is consumed by the fire;
In vain the refining goes on,
But the wicked are not separated.

And you, O desolate one, what will you do?
Although you dress in scarlet,
Although you decorate yourself with ornaments of gold,
Although you enlarge your eyes with paint,
In vain you make yourself beautiful.
Your lovers despise you;
They seek your life.

I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

But I said, “I have toiled in vain,
I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity;
Yet surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord,
And My reward with My God.”

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

Even Egypt, whose help is vain and empty.
Therefore, I have called her
“Rahab who has been exterminated.”

“In vain I have struck your sons;
They accepted no chastening.
Your sword has devoured your prophets
Like a destroying lion.

and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?

and shall dedicate to the Lord his days as a Nazirite, and shall bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering; but the former days will be void because his separation was defiled.

Then they will comfort you when you see their conduct and actions, for you will know that I have not done in vain whatever I did to it,” declares the Lord God.

Then they will know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would inflict this disaster on them.”’

It was because of a revelation that I went up; and I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but I did so in private to those who were of reputation, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain.

For this reason, when I could endure it no longer, I also sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor would be in vain.

Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

“They will not labor in vain,
Or bear children for calamity;
For they are the offspring of those blessed by the Lord,
And their descendants with them.

But I have sent the brethren, in order that our boasting about you may not be made empty in this case, so that, as I was saying, you may be prepared;

holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.

Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air;

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

For you yourselves know, brethren, that our coming to you was not in vain,