16 Bible Verses About Burdens

Psalm 55:22

“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

Reflection: The psalmist has been betrayed by a companion who “violated his covenant” and whose words “were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords” (verses 20-21). The command to cast the burden on the Lord comes directly after that description, and the psalm ends, “But I will trust in you.” Strong’s gives the Hebrew noun, yehab, the senses “burden” and “lot.”

1 Peter 5:7

“Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

Reflection: The verse finishes a sentence that begins in verse 6: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.” Casting anxieties on God is attached to that command to be humble. The verses after it warn of the devil “like a roaring lion” and tell the readers that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by “your brotherhood throughout the world.”

Psalm 68:19

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation.”

Reflection: The ESV reads “who daily bears us up,” and the NIV and NASB read “who daily bears our burdens” and “who daily bears our burden.” The Hebrew verb, amas, means to load or to carry a load. The next verse names what God carries his people through: “to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.”

Isaiah 46:4

“Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”

Reflection: The chapter opens with the idols Bel and Nebo loaded onto animals: “these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts” (verse 1). The idols have to be carried. The God of Israel says the opposite of himself: his people have been “borne by me from before your birth,” and he will carry them to old age. Verse 7 returns to the contrast: worshippers “lift it to their shoulders” and set the idol in its place, where “it cannot move.”

Psalm 81:6

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket.”

Reflection: The psalm sets these words in the time of Egypt (verse 5). The shoulder and the basket are a labourer’s, and God speaks of freeing them from the load. The next line connects the release to Israel’s cry: “In distress you called, and I delivered you.”

Psalm 38:4

“For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.”

Reflection: The psalm opens with a plea, “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,” and the psalmist names the cause of his suffering: “there is no health in my bones because of my sin” (verse 3). In this verse the burden is his own iniquity, “too heavy for me.” The verses around it describe the weight in the body: festering wounds, being “utterly bowed down,” feeble and crushed.

Matthew 23:4

“They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”

Reflection: Jesus tells the crowds and his disciples to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach but not what they do, “for they preach, but do not practice” (verse 3). The heavy burdens are laid on other people’s shoulders by teachers who will not “move them with their finger.” Thayer’s lexicon takes these burdens as burdensome rites. The Greek pairs phortion, load, with barys, heavy.

Matthew 11:28

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Reflection: Jesus has just thanked the Father for hiding “these things” from “the wise and understanding” and revealing them to “little children” (verse 25). The invitation is to “all who labor and are heavy laden,” and the passage does not say what the load is. Rest is promised here and again in verse 29.

Matthew 11:29-30

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Reflection: A yoke joins an animal to the load it pulls. Jesus offers his own yoke to those who will “learn from me,” and he describes himself as “gentle and lowly in heart.” The verse still names a yoke and a burden, called easy and light. Thayer’s lexicon says the burden here is styled a burden “by way of contrast to the precepts of the Pharisees the observance of which was most oppressive.” Matthew 23:4 uses the same noun, phortion, for the heavy burdens the Pharisees lay on others.

1 John 5:3

“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”

Reflection: John defines the love of God as keeping his commandments, and adds that they “are not burdensome.” The Greek adjective is barys, the word Matthew 23:4 uses for the “heavy” burdens of the scribes and Pharisees. The next verse gives the reason: “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.”

Numbers 11:14

“I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me.”

Reflection: The people are weeping for meat, and Moses asks God, “Did I conceive all this people?” since he has been told to carry them “as a nurse carries a nursing child” (verse 12). God answers by gathering seventy elders and putting on them some of the Spirit that is on Moses: “they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone” (verse 17). In Exodus 18:18-22, Jethro tells Moses, “the thing is too heavy for you,” and advises him to appoint judges who “will bear the burden with you.”

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”

Reflection: The Preacher has just described a man with “no other, either son or brother,” who toils without end and never asks whom he is working for (verses 7-8). Against him he sets two people, one of whom lifts the other after a fall. The passage goes on to two keeping warm together and a “threefold cord” that “is not quickly broken” (verse 12).

Galatians 6:2

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Reflection: The verse before tells those who are spiritual to restore anyone “caught in any transgression” gently, and to keep watch on themselves. Thayer’s lexicon takes the burdens of verse 2 as those faults. Bearing them, Paul says, fulfils “the law of Christ.” The Greek word is baros, weight, which Paul also uses in 2 Corinthians 4:17.

Galatians 6:5

“For each will have to bear his own load.”

Reflection: Three verses after “Bear one another’s burdens,” Paul writes that each will bear his own load. Here the word is phortion, the noun Matthew 11:30 uses for the burden of Jesus; verse 2 used baros. HELPS Word-studies defines a phortion as a burden that must be carried by the individual. Verse 4 gives the setting: each is to “test his own work,” with his reason to boast “in himself alone and not in his neighbor.”

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 pleaded three times for a “thorn in the flesh” to leave him (verses 7-8). Verse 9 is the answer he records, and the passage does not say the thorn was removed. Verse 10 draws his conclusion from that answer: he is content with weaknesses and hardships “for the sake of Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:17

“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

Reflection: Paul has just written that “our outer self is wasting away” while “our inner self is being renewed day by day” (verse 16). He calls the affliction light and momentary and sets it against “an eternal weight of glory.” The Greek for weight is baros, the word for the burdens of Galatians 6:2. Verse 18 says where he is looking: “not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.”