# 20 Bible Verses About Being Sad Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-being-sad/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2025-11-23 Updated: 2026-09-25 The Bible records the sadness of faithful people and of Jesus himself, and it gives words for saying that sadness to God. Psalm 42, Psalm 13, Psalm 6, Job 3 and Lamentations 3 are spoken by people in sorrow, and Psalm 30:5 and Revelation 21:4 say that weeping will end. Nehemiah 2:2 tells of a sad face a king noticed, and John 11:35 and Matthew 26:38 show Jesus weeping and "overwhelmed with sorrow". Two passages say what sorrow can do. Ecclesiastes 7:3 holds that "a sad face is good for the heart", and 2 Corinthians 7:10 separates godly sorrow, which brings repentance, from worldly sorrow, which brings death. ## Sadness spoken aloud ### Psalm 42:11 > "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." **Reflection:** The heading assigns Psalm 42 to the Sons of Korah. The writer says, "My tears have been my food day and night" while people ask him, "Where is your God?" (42:3), and he recalls the festival crowds he once went up with to God's house (42:4). Here he questions his own soul and answers it with a command to hope; the same lines appear in 42:5 and again in Psalm 43:5, and the psalm ends on them with nothing in his circumstances yet changed. ### Psalm 13:1-2 > "How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?" **Reflection:** The heading assigns the psalm to David. In two verses he asks "How long" four times: of God forgetting him, of God hiding his face, of his own thoughts and daily sorrow, and of his enemy's triumph. Verse 3 asks the Lord to look on him and answer, "or I will sleep in death". ### Psalm 6:6-7 > "I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes." **Reflection:** David opens the psalm asking not to be rebuked in anger and cries, "How long, Lord, how long?" (6:3). The weeping he describes lasts all night and wears out his eyes. The next verse says, "the Lord has heard my weeping" (6:8). ### Job 3:26 > "I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil." **Reflection:** Job's friends had sat with him in silence for seven days and nights (2:13). When he speaks, he curses the day of his birth and asks why life is given "to the bitter of soul" (3:20). This verse closes that first speech. Eliphaz replies in chapter 4; the Lord does not speak to Job until chapter 38. ### Lamentations 3:17-18 > "I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, 'My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.'" **Reflection:** The speaker in Lamentations 3 says his hope from the Lord is gone and that his soul is "downcast within me" (3:20). The next verse turns: "Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope", and what he calls to mind is that the Lord's compassions "are new every morning" (3:21-23). Two verses of remembered affliction (3:19-20) stand between the admission that hope had gone and the hope of 3:21. ## A sad face, and what sorrow can produce ### Nehemiah 2:2 > "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart." **Reflection:** Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king (1:11), named in 2:1 as Artaxerxes. On hearing that Jerusalem's wall was broken down and its gates burned, he "sat down and wept" and mourned for some days (1:3-4). He had never been sad in the king's presence before, and when the king noticed, he was "very much afraid". He named the cause, the city of his ancestors lying in ruins, and asked to be sent to rebuild it (2:3-5). ### Ecclesiastes 7:3 > "Frustration is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart." **Reflection:** The saying sits in a run of "better than" comparisons. The verse before says it is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting, "for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart." The verse after says, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure." ### 2 Corinthians 7:10 > "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." **Reflection:** Paul had sent the Corinthians a letter that hurt them (7:8). He says he is happy "not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance" (7:9). He tells the two kinds of sorrow apart by where they lead, and in 7:11 he lists what godly sorrow produced in the church: earnestness, eagerness to clear themselves, longing, concern. ## Jesus in sorrow ### John 11:35 > "Jesus wept." **Reflection:** Lazarus had been in the tomb four days when Jesus reached Bethany (11:17). Seeing Mary and those with her weeping, he was "deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (11:33), and he wept. Earlier he had told his disciples he was going "to wake him up" (11:11); he wept all the same, and the onlookers said, "See how he loved him!" (11:36). ### Matthew 26:38 > "Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’" **Reflection:** In Gethsemane, shortly before Judas arrived with the crowd, Jesus took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with him and "began to be sorrowful and troubled" (26:37). He told the three what he felt and asked them to keep watch with him. Then he fell to the ground and prayed for the cup to be taken from him, "Yet not as I will, but as you will" (26:39). ## God near the sad ### Psalm 34:18 > "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." **Reflection:** The heading places Psalm 34 after David pretended to be insane before Abimelek and was driven away. The verse before says the Lord hears the righteous when they cry out. The verse after does not promise an easy life: "The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all." ### Psalm 147:3 > "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." **Reflection:** Psalm 147 opens with a call to praise, and the verse before this one reads, "The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel." Healing the brokenhearted and binding their wounds is listed alongside rebuilding the city and bringing its exiles home. The next verse moves to the stars: God "determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name" (147:4). ### Matthew 5:4 > "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." **Reflection:** The second beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount follows "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (5:3). Jesus does not say what the mourners grieve over, and the comfort is in the future tense. Isaiah 61:2 uses the same pairing when it speaks of one sent "to comfort all who mourn". ### 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 > "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." **Reflection:** Paul opens the letter by praising God as "the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort". The comfort is meant to be passed on: those who receive it comfort others "with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." A few verses later he says that in the province of Asia "we despaired of life itself" (1:8). ## Sorrow turned to joy ### Psalm 30:5 > "For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." **Reflection:** The heading reads "A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple. Of David." David says the Lord healed him and brought him up "from the realm of the dead" (30:2-3). The verse sets anger against a lifetime of favour and a night of weeping against the morning, and 30:11 describes the change: "You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy." ### Nehemiah 8:10 > "Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." **Reflection:** The people had wept as Ezra read the Law to them (8:9). Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites told them not to mourn, because "This day is holy to our Lord", and sent them to eat, drink and share food with those who had nothing prepared. The people celebrated "because they now understood the words that had been made known to them" (8:12). The command not to grieve was spoken on a holy day to people who had wept as they listened to the Law. ### Isaiah 61:3 > "to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." **Reflection:** The speaker says the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on him and that he has been sent "to bind up the brokenhearted" and "to comfort all who mourn" (61:1-2). Verse 3 lists three exchanges: beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for despair. In Luke 4:18-21 Jesus reads the opening of this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and says, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." ### John 16:22 > "So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy." **Reflection:** Before his arrest, Jesus tells the disciples they will weep and mourn while the world rejoices (16:20). He compares their grief to a woman in labour, whose anguish gives way to joy when the child is born (16:21). He tells them, "Now is your time of grief", and promises a joy "no one will take away". ### Isaiah 35:10 > "and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." **Reflection:** Isaiah 35 opens with the desert and the parched land rejoicing, and tells those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come" (35:4). A highway called the Way of Holiness runs through the restored land, and only the redeemed walk on it (35:8-9). They reach Zion singing, and gladness and joy overtake them as sorrow and sighing flee. Isaiah 51:11 repeats the verse in the same words. ### Revelation 21:4 > "‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." **Reflection:** John hears a loud voice from the throne announce that God's dwelling place is now among the people (21:3). The words about wiping tears echo Isaiah 25:8, "The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces." Mourning and crying are listed with death and pain as part of "the old order of things". ## Where each lament ends Psalm 6:1-7 is addressed to the Lord and can be prayed as written; in 6:8 David turns on his enemies: "Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping." Psalm 13 is also addressed to the Lord, and it ends in 13:5-6 with "But I trust in your unfailing love" and a promise to sing the Lord's praise, "for he has been good to me." Psalm 42:11 is addressed to the psalmist's own soul, and he asks the same question three times across Psalms 42 and 43 without recording a change in his situation. Job 3 ends with "only turmoil". Eliphaz answers in Job 4, and the Lord speaks to Job "out of the storm" in Job 38:1. Lamentations 3:18 says hope is gone; in 3:21 the speaker calls something to mind and has hope, and 3:22 names it: "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed." --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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