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Isaiah 40:31 vs. “Wait on You”

Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassageIsaiah 40:31 chapter ↗ 3 more proofs on Isaiah 40 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asquotation
Categoryadditions / omissions
AlbumOld Church Basement · 2021
Words addressed tovaries by section
Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✗Text-faithful
✗Translation named
✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The closing refrain plants the whole promise of Isaiah 40:31, waiting, renewed strength, wings, running and walking that do not give out, in the verse's own third person
  • The verses practice what the verse's “wait” carries in Hebrew: qavah is expectant hope built on recalling what God has done, and the song's testimony is exactly that recalling
  • The chorus vows to wait because God has kept promises, which is Isaiah 40's own argument, the character of God as the ground of the waiting
  • The first-person vow is kept apart from the recitation: the chorus never dresses the singer's words as scripture

⚠ Cautions

  • The refrain sounds like the King James and is not quite it. Transcriptions of the recording show a soaring clause the verse does not have and the walking sung before the running. Check a KJV before quoting the refrain as the verse
  • No reference and no translation are named anywhere in the recording, so the recitation has to be recognized to be checked
  • The chorus's vow is sung many times. On a hard day a repeated vow can turn into a scoreboard. The song's own answer is that the waiting rests on God's record, not the singer's stamina

Verse Proof

Isaiah 40:31

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”

This is the last sentence of Isaiah 40, the chapter that opens with comfort for a Judah headed into exile. Verse 27 records the complaint being answered: Jacob says his way is hidden from the LORD. Verses 28 to 30 build the reply. The LORD is the everlasting Creator who never grows tired, He gives power to the faint, and every human reserve fails, even the youngest and strongest. Verse 31 is the conclusion the chapter has been climbing toward: those who wait on this God renew their strength, rise, run, walk. The word rendered “wait upon” is the Hebrew qavah, hope held at tension, not idle delay.

What the song says, described not quoted

A live recording of nine and a half minutes, co-led by Dante Bowe and Chandler Moore, from the joint Elevation Worship and Maverick City album recorded in a church basement. The verses are testimony. The first recalls a hospital moment when the doctors had nothing left and God did not, and the later verses say God writes the singer's steps and holds a future the singer cannot see. The chorus is a first-person vow addressed to God: the singer will wait on Him, because He has been good and keeps what He promises. A short bridge frames waiting as the smallest offering the singer can make after what God has done. Then the closing stretch changes voice. A refrain recites Isaiah 40:31's promise in the old Bible's third-person grammar: those who wait, strength renewed, mounting up on wings, an eagle, soaring, and walking and running that do not give out. The address shifts with it. Verses and chorus speak to a general You, never named as Father, Jesus, or Spirit, and the refrain speaks to no one, it speaks about those who wait.

The refrain is built from the King James's clauses and keeps its opening nearly intact, down to the archaic “they that” construction. Three things shifted. The eagle image is reworked, with a soaring clause the King James does not have. The final two verbs trade places: published transcriptions of the recording sing the walking before the running, so the verse's descent from flying to running to walking arrives in a different order. And nothing in the recording names a reference or a translation, so the recitation has to be recognized to be checked. The chorus, separately and honestly, turns the verse's third-person promise into a first-person vow, and never presents that vow as scripture.

✎ Departs from the text: The closing refrain carries Isaiah 40:31's clauses in King James grammar. But the published wording adds a soaring line, and sings the walking before the running. The recording names no reference and no translation.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

A refrain in King James dress gets remembered as the King James. This one is close, and not it.

Why it matters

Archaic grammar is heard as a citation. A refrain that opens with “they that” tells the listener it is the King James before any checking happens, and it gets filed in memory as the King James. This one is close enough that most singers will never look, and the drift is real: a clause the verse does not have, and an ending sung out of the verse's order. The stakes are low, because nothing false about God enters. The habit is the point. The old grammar is a style, and a style is not a source.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What the loop plants is a vow welded to a reason: I will wait on You, because You have been good. That is formation toward God, since the waiting is rehearsed as trust in God's record rather than as the singer's endurance project. The dwelling tag is mixed by honest count. The verses are about what God did, the chorus is about what the singer will do, and the refrain is about those who wait and what they receive. The arrangement matters for the repeat test: the verse's promise is what the recording sings last and longest, so what a listener carries out of the room is closest to the text of anything in the song. The Hebrew behind “wait” asks for exactly the shape this song has, expectation fed by remembered rescue. Singing it as that, a memory feeding a hope, is singing it the way Isaiah 40 argues.

Helpful comparison

One documented note deepens the song rather than undercutting it. The word the BSB renders “wait upon” is qavah, which BibleProject's scholarship team describes as the tension of a stretched cord, expectant hope that actively recalls what God has already done, and which English Bibles render as wait or as hope depending on the version. The song's structure agrees with the word. Its first verse is a remembered rescue, and its chorus grounds the vow in God's record of kept promises. Even the refrain's added soaring is a kind of translation memory: the King James mounts up, several modern versions soar, and the refrain sings both, which is how a congregation's memory holds a famous verse, in every version at once. That is also why it cannot be quoted as any one of them.

Sources

Corrections

  1. The tier moved from faithful to departs. The entry has always said the closing refrain is presented as the verse and does not match it: it carries a soaring clause Isaiah 40:31 does not have and sings the walking before the running. That is what the departs tier is defined as, and the faithful badge beside a failed text criterion contradicted the entry's own evidence. The finding, the criteria and the good and cautions are unchanged; the bottom line now says to sing the refrain as an echo of the verse rather than as the verse.

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

~ FAITHFUL “Soar Like Eagles” Seeds Family Worship (now Seeds Kids Worship) Isaiah 40:28-31 Sing it. Three verses arrive whole and in order. Check the words against an NIV rather than the ESV the album page names, and read verse 28 once, so the singer knows why the strength renews.

✓ Three consecutive verses sung whole and in order, with a chorus built entirely from the passage's own clauses

⚠ The album page lists the scripture version as ESV while the song's own chart credits the NIV, and the sung wording is the NIV's. The label a listener sees first names the wrong text

 ~ FAITHFUL “Holy, Holy, Holy” Audrey Assad Isaiah 6:1-3 Sing it. The threefold cry is the verse, kept exactly. The Trinity line is the church's reading of that cry, stated openly. Knowing which layer is Isaiah and which is doctrine is the whole assignment here.

✓ The seraphim's threefold cry is carried exactly, and every name the hymn gives God is one scripture gives Him

⚠ In the Hebrew, the threefold repetition is emphasis, the superlative at full strength. Naming the three persons in it is the church's later reading, not the verse's own statement

 ~ FAITHFUL “How Firm a Foundation” Sovereign Grace Music Isaiah 41:10 Sing it. When this hymn speaks as God, it repeats what he has said: the fear-not stanza is Isaiah 41:10 in close King James wording, and the first stanza announces that plan out loud.

✓ The first stanza announces the method: everything sung in God's voice afterward is presented as what he has already said in his word

⚠ No translation is named, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked. In 1787 that went without saying; in 2026 it does not

More songs like this

~ FAITHFUL “Soar Like Eagles” Seeds Family Worship (now Seeds Kids Worship) Isaiah 40:28-31 Sing it. Three verses arrive whole and in order. Check the words against an NIV rather than the ESV the album page names, and read verse 28 once, so the singer knows why the strength renews.

✓ Three consecutive verses sung whole and in order, with a chorus built entirely from the passage's own clauses

⚠ The album page lists the scripture version as ESV while the song's own chart credits the NIV, and the sung wording is the NIV's. The label a listener sees first names the wrong text

 ~ FAITHFUL “Holy, Holy, Holy” Audrey Assad Isaiah 6:1-3 Sing it. The threefold cry is the verse, kept exactly. The Trinity line is the church's reading of that cry, stated openly. Knowing which layer is Isaiah and which is doctrine is the whole assignment here.

✓ The seraphim's threefold cry is carried exactly, and every name the hymn gives God is one scripture gives Him

⚠ In the Hebrew, the threefold repetition is emphasis, the superlative at full strength. Naming the three persons in it is the church's later reading, not the verse's own statement

 ✎ DEPARTS “Take Captive Every Thought (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 You can sing it. It is 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 in the NIV's words. But the label says ESV. Check it against an NIV, and know one printed word is not the NIV's either.

✓ Verses 3, 4 and 5 all arrive, in order, in the NIV's wording. No line is added, and none is explained or expanded.

⚠ The label names the ESV in four places. The words are the NIV's. Check the song against an NIV, not against the version the label sends you to.

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