17 Bible Verses About Brokenness

Psalm 6:6-7

“I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes.”

Reflection: David’s prayer opens with a plea not to be disciplined in anger and an unfinished question: “But you, O LORD—how long?” (verse 3). By verses 6 and 7 he is weeping through the night, his eye weak from grief and from his enemies. The psalm turns in the next two verses without any change in his circumstances being described: “the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.”

Psalm 38:8

“I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.”

Reflection: Here the psalmist ties his collapse to his own sin: “there is no health in my bones because of my sin” (verse 3), and later, “I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin” (verse 18). Friends and family keep their distance (verse 11). The psalm ends still asking, “Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation!”

Psalm 31:12

“I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.”

Reflection: The speaker in Psalm 31 is grieving in body and soul (verse 9); he is a reproach to his neighbours, and those who see him in the street flee (verse 11). The cry of verse 13, “terror on every side,” is the same phrase Jeremiah hears in Jeremiah 20:10, and the next verse turns: “But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, ‘You are my God.’”

Lamentations 3:17-18

“My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is. So I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD.’”

Reflection: The speaker of Lamentations 3 introduces himself as “the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath,” and says of God, “he has broken my bones” (verse 4). At verse 18 he says his hope from the LORD has perished. Three verses later he calls something else to mind: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (verses 22-23).

Job 3:20-21

“Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures?”

Reflection: Job speaks these words after losing his children, his livestock and his health in chapters 1 and 2, and his speech opens by cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:1). He asks why life is given to people who want only to die. Two verses later he describes himself as a man “whom God has hedged in,” the image Satan used in Job 1:10 for God’s protection: “Have you not put a hedge around him?”

Jeremiah 20:14, 18

“Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?”

Reflection: Jeremiah has just been beaten and put in the stocks by the priest Pashhur (Jeremiah 20:1-2). He says God’s word burns in his bones when he tries to keep silent (verse 9). Jeremiah 20 turns to praise at 20:13 and then ends on the curse and its unanswered question.

Psalm 34:18

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

Reflection: The verses around it describe a God whose ears are open to the cry of the righteous (verse 15) and who “hears and delivers them out of all their troubles” (verse 17). The next verse does not deny the trouble: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.”

Psalm 147:3

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Reflection: Psalm 147 is a hymn of praise. The verse before says the LORD “builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel,” and the verse after says “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.”

Isaiah 61:1, 3

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.”

Reflection: The speaker is anointed by the Spirit of the Lord GOD and sent to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives and “those who mourn in Zion.” Each gift replaces a sign of grief: a headdress for ashes, oil of gladness for mourning, a garment of praise for a faint spirit. In Luke 4:18-21 Jesus reads the opening of this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Psalm 51:17

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Reflection: The heading of Psalm 51 places it after the prophet Nathan confronted David over Bathsheba. Verse 16 says God does not delight in burnt offering; verse 17 names the sacrifice he does accept. Earlier David asks, “let the bones that you have broken rejoice” (verse 8).

Isaiah 57:15

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

Reflection: God describes himself as dwelling in two places at once: “the high and holy place” and with the contrite and lowly, whose spirit and heart he revives. Isaiah 66:2 says the same of the person God looks to: “he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Reflection: Paul writes these lines about himself and his fellow workers. The verse before gives the image: “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” Each pair names real damage and a limit to it, and verse 16 adds, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Reflection: Paul had pleaded three times for his “thorn in the flesh” to be taken away (verses 7-8); the letter does not say what the thorn was. The answer he received was a statement about God’s grace, and Paul concludes, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

“…the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Reflection: Paul opens the letter by blessing God before describing what he went through. A few verses later he tells the Corinthians that in Asia he and his companions were “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (verse 8). The comfort he received is meant to be passed on to others in “any affliction.”

Psalm 30:5

“For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Reflection: Psalm 30 is headed “A song at the dedication of the temple,” and it looks back on a recovery: “O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me” (verse 2). David admits he had once said, “I shall never be moved” (verse 6), and then God hid his face. Near its end the psalm says mourning has been turned into dancing (verse 11).

1 Peter 5:10

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

Reflection: Peter closes his letter to scattered believers by reminding them that “the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (verse 9). The promise has four verbs, restore, confirm, strengthen and establish, and God himself is the subject of all four. The letter does not say how long “a little while” is.

Revelation 21:4

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Reflection: John hears a loud voice from the throne in his vision of a new heaven and a new earth. Tears, death, mourning, crying and pain are named one by one and said to be over. In the next verse the one seated on the throne says, “Behold, I am making all things new.”