‘Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees, and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way (or ‘put out of joint'), but rather be healed.'
He likens his readers to people who have given up because they are in despair. Because they have been frozen into inactivity. Their hands are hanging down so that they are doing nothing, their knees are like palsied knees which will not support them. They are like athletes who are wilting in the long distance race, their hands hanging down, their knees paralysed with overstrain, wandering all over the course into the rough ground, unable properly to run the race (Hebrews 12:1). They are like those wandering in a maze and are finding their ways difficult because of their doubts. But let them now wake up. Let them stir themselves (because God the Father of their spirits is stirring them). Let them see the way before them in the light of the Scriptures so that they run in the true way along straight paths. Let them get their understanding of its teaching straightened out in accordance with what he has written to them. Let them respond to God and thus be made whole, and be fully restored. Then the weak also will not go astray. And the lame, whose limbs are liable to be put out of joint as a result of leaving the main path and going into the less trodden and therefore rough ways, will rather be healed. They will be bound up by God. Compare Isaiah 35:3-8; Proverbs 4:26; Matthew 3:3; Jeremiah 17:14; Ezekiel 47:9.