Isaiah 46:4

The whole force of this verse is in a contrast set up a few lines earlier, and it is close to satire.

Isaiah has been describing Babylon's gods at the moment of the city's fall: statues strapped to the backs of oxen, sagging, a burden to the weary animals hauling them out. The point is unmissable. Those gods have to be carried. They are cargo.

Then God says: I have made, and I will bear; yes, I will carry, and will deliver. The verbs are reversed. This is the god who does the carrying rather than being carried, and the object being carried is you.

And he names the hardest stretch specifically. Even to old age. Even to gray hairs. Not a general promise of lifelong care — a promise aimed at the part of life where people are most often set down. The verse before it says he has carried them since birth, from the womb; this one extends the same arms to the far end, where dependence returns and dignity gets harder to hold on to.

I am he is the phrase in the middle, and it is deliberately unchanged. Everything else in the sentence moves — age advances, hair greys, strength goes. The subject of the sentence does not.

Which is why this verse is often read at hospital bedsides. It was written for exactly that room.