Isaiah 40:17
◄  Isaiah 40:17  ►
New International Version (©2011)
Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.

New Living Translation (©2007)
The nations of the world are worth nothing to him. In his eyes they count for less than nothing--mere emptiness and froth.

English Standard Version (©2001)
All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

Holman Christian Standard Bible (©2009)
All the nations are as nothing before Him; they are considered by Him as nothingness and emptiness.

International Standard Version (©2012)
All the nations are as nothing before him— they are reckoned by him as nothing and chaos.

NET Bible (©2006)
All the nations are insignificant before him; they are regarded as absolutely nothing.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
All the nations amount to nothing in his presence. He considers them less than nothing and worthless.

King James 2000 Bible (©2003)
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and worthless.

American King James Version
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

American Standard Version
All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing, and vanity.

Douay-Rheims Bible
All nations are before him as if they had no being at all, and are counted to him as nothing, and vanity.

Darby Bible Translation
All the nations are as nothing before him; they are esteemed by him less than a cipher, and vanity.

English Revised Version
All the nations are as nothing before him; they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

Webster's Bible Translation
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

World English Bible
All the nations are like nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than nothing, and vanity.

Young's Literal Translation
All the nations are as nothing before Him, Less than nothing and emptiness, They have been reckoned to Him.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

40:12-17 All created beings shrink to nothing in comparison with the Creator. When the Lord, by his Spirit, made the world, none directed his Spirit, or gave advice what to do, or how to do it. The nations, in comparison of him, are as a drop which remains in the bucket, compared with the vast ocean; or as the small dust in the balance, which does not turn it, compared with all the earth. This magnifies God's love to the world, that, though it is of such small account and value with him, yet, for the redemption of it, he gave his only-begotten Son, Joh 3:16. The services of the church can make no addition to him. Our souls must have perished for ever, if the only Son of the Father had not given himself for us.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - All nations; rather, all the nations; i.e. all the nations of the earth put together. In ver. 15 single "nations" had been declared to be of no account; now the same is said of all the nations of the earth collectively. They are accounted of God as 'ephes, nothingness, and tohu, chaos or confusion.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

All nations before him are as nothing,.... As if they were nonentities, and were not real beings in comparison of him, who is the Being of beings, the author of all beings which exist in all nations; who are all in his sight, and are not only as grasshoppers, as is after mentioned, but even as nothing:

and they are counted to him as less than nothing, and vanity; if there is or could be such a thing less than nothing, that they are; and so they are accounted of by him; they are like the chaos out of which the earth was formed, when it was "tohu" and "bohu", the first of which words is used here; this serves to humble the pride of men, and to lessen the glory of the nations, and the inhabitants of them.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17. (Ps 62:9; Da 4:35).

less than nothing—Maurer translates, as in Isa 41:24, "of nothing" (partitively; or expressive of the nature of a thing), a mere nothing.

vanity—emptiness.

Isaiah 40:17 Parallel Commentaries

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Here is Your God!
…16And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 17All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. 18To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare to him? …

Psalm 62:9 Surely the lowborn are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie. If weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they are only a breath.
Isaiah 2:22 Stop trusting in mere humans, who have but a breath in their nostrils. Why hold them in esteem?
Isaiah 29:7 Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night--
Daniel 4:35 All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?"