22 Bible Verses About Being Lonely

Genesis 2:18

“The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”

Reflection: In Genesis 1 God calls each stage of creation good; here God calls something not good, and it is the man being alone. The animals are then brought to the man to be named, but verse 20 records that “for Adam no suitable helper was found,” and the woman is made in the verses that follow.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”

Reflection: The Teacher has just described “a man all alone” with “neither son nor brother,” who works without end and asks, “For whom am I toiling?” (verse 8). The answer comes in practical examples: one friend lifts the other after a fall, two keep warm at night, two can defend themselves, and “a cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (verse 12).

Psalm 25:16

“Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.”

Reflection: The psalm is headed “Of David,” and here he asks God to turn toward him because he is “lonely and afflicted.” The next two verses list what comes with it: troubles of the heart, anguish, distress, and a request to “take away all my sins” (verse 18). The prayer puts loneliness and the request for forgiveness side by side without saying that one caused the other.

Psalm 142:4

“Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life.”

Reflection: The heading places this prayer of David “when he was in the cave.” He looks to his right hand and finds no one concerned for him. Verse 5 turns from that empty place to God, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living,” and the psalm closes expecting that “the righteous will gather about me” (verse 7).

Psalm 88:18

“You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.”

Reflection: Heman the Ezrahite, named in the heading, addresses “the God who saves me” (verse 1) and then describes himself as “set apart with the dead.” Twice he says God has taken his friends from him: “You have taken from me my closest friends” (verse 8) and this closing line. The psalm ends here, in darkness, with no turn to praise and no answer recorded.

Psalm 22:1-2

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”

Reflection: Jesus cried the opening line of this psalm from the cross (Matthew 27:46). The speaker calls by day and by night without an answer, and verse 11 names the loneliness outright: “there is no one to help.” Between the complaints he recalls that Israel’s ancestors “trusted and you delivered them” (verse 4), and later in the psalm he promises, “in the assembly I will praise you” (verse 22).

Lamentations 1:1

“How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.”

Reflection: Lamentations opens by mourning Jerusalem after Judah “has gone into exile” (verse 3), and pictures the city as a widow in streets “once so full of people.” Verse 2 continues, “Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her.” The chapter comes back to the same lack of a comforter in verses 9, 16, 17 and 21.

1 Kings 19:10

“He replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.’”

Reflection: Elijah says this in a cave at Horeb after he “ran for his life” from Jezebel’s threat (verses 2-3). Before that, under a broom bush, he had prayed to die, and an angel brought him food twice. He gives the same answer twice (verses 10 and 14), and God’s reply corrects his count, “I reserve seven thousand in Israel” who have not bowed to Baal (verse 18), and sends him back to work, including anointing Elisha to succeed him.

2 Timothy 4:16-17

“At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.”

Reflection: Near the end of the letter Paul tells Timothy that Demas has deserted him, that “Only Luke is with me” (verse 11), and asks him to come quickly and bring the cloak left at Troas. Of his first defense he says no one supported him; he asks that it not be held against them, and says the Lord stood at his side and gave him strength.

John 16:32

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”

Reflection: The disciples have just said, “This makes us believe that you came from God” (verse 30), and Jesus answers, “Do you now believe?” He predicts that they will scatter and leave him alone, and in the same breath says he is not alone, because the Father is with him. Verse 33 gives his reason for telling them: “so that in me you may have peace.”

Matthew 26:40

“Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter.”

Reflection: In Gethsemane Jesus took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with him and told them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (verse 38). He came back from prayer to find them asleep, and the same thing happened twice more (verses 42-45) before his betrayer arrived.

Mark 14:50

“Then everyone deserted him and fled.”

Reflection: Earlier that night Jesus had told the disciples, “You will all fall away,” quoting the line “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (verse 27). When the crowd came with swords and clubs, all of them fled. Mark adds a young man who ran off naked, leaving his linen garment behind (verses 51-52).

Matthew 27:46

“About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).”

Reflection: Jesus cries out the first line of Psalm 22 after the mocking of verses 39-44 and three hours of darkness (verse 45). The mockers were passers-by, the chief priests and the rebels crucified with him. Matthew gives the words as Jesus spoke them and then translates them.

Deuteronomy 31:8

“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Reflection: Moses, who has just said that God told him “You shall not cross the Jordan” (verse 2), says this to Joshua in front of all Israel as Joshua is about to lead them across. Verse 6 gives the same promise to the whole people, and Hebrews 13:5 quotes it to Christians: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Psalm 27:10

“Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.”

Reflection: David’s plea “Do not reject me or forsake me, God my Savior” (verse 9) is followed by this line, which sets the Lord against the closest human ties. Even if father and mother forsake him, the Lord will receive him.

Psalm 139:7-8

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”

Reflection: David asks where he could go to get away from God and answers with the farthest places he can name: the heavens, the depths and “the far side of the sea” (verse 9). Verses 11-12 add that darkness does not hide him either: “the night will shine like the day.” More passages on the presence of God take up the same theme.

John 14:18

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

Reflection: Jesus is preparing the disciples for his departure, and an orphan is a child left without parents. The verses around this one name how he will not leave them so: the Father will give “another advocate,” the Spirit of truth, who “lives with you and will be in you” (verses 16-17), and “Because I live, you also will live” (verse 19).

Hebrews 4:15

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

Reflection: The letter calls Jesus a high priest who can “empathize with our weaknesses” because he was “tempted in every way, just as we are.” Verse 16 draws the conclusion from that: approach “God’s throne of grace with confidence” to find “grace to help us in our time of need.”

Psalm 68:6

“God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.”

Reflection: The verse belongs to a hymn that calls God “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” (verse 5). In the same line God leads prisoners out with singing. The answer this verse gives to loneliness is a household.

Romans 12:15

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

Reflection: Paul gives this in a list of ways the Christians in Rome are to treat one another. The next verse goes on: “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.”

Hebrews 10:24-25

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Reflection: The writer warns against “giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,” so some in the community had already stopped coming. The remedy named is encouragement from one another, “all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

James 1:27

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Reflection: James defines the religion God accepts by two tests, and one of them is looking after orphans and widows “in their distress.” The same two groups appear in Psalm 68:5, where God is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows.”