# 20 Bible Verses About Home Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-home/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2025-12-11 Updated: 2026-09-25 The Bible speaks of home as a house the Lord builds, where his commands are taught and strangers are welcomed, and as a dwelling with God. Psalm 127:1 has the Lord build the house, Deuteronomy 6:7 has his commands taught in it, Hebrews 13:2 opens it to strangers, and in John 14:2 Jesus promises rooms in his Father's house. In both Testaments "house" can mean a building, the people who live in it, or a family line. Joshua's "me and my house" means his household, and the house God promises David in 2 Samuel 7:27 ("I will build you a house") is a dynasty, so David's prayer that "the house of your servant" be blessed forever (2 Samuel 7:29) asks for his line of kings to last. ## Who builds a house ### Psalm 127:1 > "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." **Reflection:** The psalm sets two workers side by side: builders on a house and a watchman on the city wall, and both labour "in vain" unless the Lord builds and watches. Verse 2 extends the point to a household's daily work, rising early and going late to rest, "for he gives to his beloved sleep," and verses 3-5 turn to children as "a heritage from the Lord." ### Proverbs 24:3-4 > "By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches." **Reflection:** The saying follows a warning against envying evil men, whose "hearts devise violence" (Proverbs 24:1-2). Wisdom, understanding and knowledge are its building materials: wisdom builds the house, understanding makes it firm, and knowledge fills the rooms. Proverbs 14:1 makes the same point about a household from the other side: "The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down." ### Matthew 7:24 > "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock." **Reflection:** Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with two builders. The wise one hears his words and does them, and when rain, floods and wind beat on his house, "it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock" (Matthew 7:25). The foolish builder hears the same words without doing them, builds on sand, "and great was the fall of it" (7:27). ## A peaceful house ### Isaiah 32:18 > "My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places." **Reflection:** Isaiah first warns the "complacent women" that "all the joyous houses in the exultant city" will be deserted (Isaiah 32:9-14). The peaceful habitation of verse 18 comes after that loss, once "the Spirit is poured upon us from on high" (verse 15), and verse 17 names its source: "the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever." ### Proverbs 17:1 > "Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife." **Reflection:** The proverb compares two households, one with little to eat and quiet, the other with plenty and strife, and prefers the first. Proverbs 15:17 makes the same comparison with food and love: "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it." ## Faith taught and chosen at home ### Deuteronomy 6:6-7 > "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." **Reflection:** Moses gives this command straight after the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4), so "these words" include the command to love God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." The teaching belongs to ordinary hours, sitting at home, walking on the road, lying down and getting up. Verse 9 puts the words on the building itself: "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." ### Joshua 24:15 > "But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." **Reflection:** Joshua gathered the tribes of Israel at Shechem (Joshua 24:1), recounted what God had done for them, and told them to "put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt" (verse 14). He sets the choice before the whole people, "choose this day whom you will serve," and answers for his own household before they reply. The people's answer follows in verse 16: "Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods." ### Proverbs 31:27 > "She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness." **Reflection:** The verse belongs to the poem on "an excellent wife" (Proverbs 31:10) that ends the book. It describes the running of a household as watchful work, set against idleness, and the next verse gives the household's response: "Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her." ### Ephesians 6:4 > "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." **Reflection:** Paul's instructions to the household run from Ephesians 5:21 to 6:9 and address wives and husbands, children and fathers, and bondservants and masters in turn. Children are told to obey and honour their parents (6:1-3). Fathers are told not to provoke their children to anger and to bring them up "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." ## Opening the home to others ### Romans 12:13 > "Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality." **Reflection:** The command sits in a run of instructions that begins in Romans 12:9 with "Let love be genuine" and continues to the end of the chapter. Meeting the needs of fellow believers and showing hospitality stand side by side in it, and verse 20 extends the same care to an enemy: "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink." ### 1 Peter 4:9 > "Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." **Reflection:** Peter writes that "the end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7) and then gives a short list of duties: prayer, earnest love, hospitality, and the use of each person's gift "to serve one another" (verse 10). Hospitality in the list comes with a condition: it is to be given "without grumbling." ### Hebrews 13:2 > "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." **Reflection:** The letter's closing instructions begin with "Let brotherly love continue" (Hebrews 13:1), and hospitality to strangers comes next. Hebrews names no one, but Genesis 18 and 19 tell of Abraham at his tent door welcoming three men, one of them the Lord (Genesis 18:1-2), and of Lot at the gate of Sodom welcoming two angels (19:1). Verse 3 carries the same care to prisoners and to those who are mistreated. ## God as a dwelling place ### Psalm 90:1 > "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." **Reflection:** The psalm opens by calling God a "dwelling place in all generations," and verse 2 says he was God before the earth existed: "Before the mountains were brought forth ... from everlasting to everlasting you are God." Against God's eternity the psalm later sets the length of a human life: "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty" (90:10). ### Psalm 84:3-4 > "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!" **Reflection:** The psalmist longs for "the courts of the Lord" (Psalm 84:2) and notices that even the sparrow and the swallow have found a place to nest at God's altars. Those who live in God's house are called blessed, and verse 10 prefers "a day in your courts" to "a thousand elsewhere," and a doorkeeper's post in the house of God to dwelling "in the tents of wickedness." ### Psalm 23:6 > "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever." **Reflection:** Psalm 23 moves from the shepherd's pasture to a host's table: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies" (verse 5). It ends with the guest living in the house of the Lord, with goodness and mercy following him "all the days of my life." ### John 14:23 > "Jesus answered him, 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.'" **Reflection:** At supper on the night before his death, Judas (not Iscariot) asked why Jesus would show himself to the disciples and not to the world (John 14:22). Jesus answers that the one who loves him keeps his word, and that he and the Father will come to that person "and make our home with him." Earlier in the chapter Jesus goes to prepare a place in his Father's house (14:2); in this verse the Father and the Son come to make their home with the believer. ### Ephesians 2:19-22 > "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." **Reflection:** Paul writes to Gentile believers who had been "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise" (Ephesians 2:12). He now calls them "members of the household of God" and turns the household into a building: the apostles and prophets as its foundation, Christ Jesus as the cornerstone, and the believers themselves "being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." ## The home still ahead ### John 14:2-3 > "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." **Reflection:** Jesus has just told his disciples, "Where I am going you cannot come" (John 13:33), and Peter has asked where he is going. The promise of rooms in his Father's house follows: Jesus goes to prepare a place and will come back to take them there. Thomas then asks the way, and Jesus replies, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6). ### 2 Corinthians 5:1 > "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." **Reflection:** Paul calls the body "the tent that is our earthly home" and sets against it a house from God that will not be taken down. The next verses describe groaning in the present tent while "longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (2 Corinthians 5:2). ### Hebrews 11:10 > "For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." **Reflection:** Abraham lived "in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob" (Hebrews 11:9). The city he looked for had foundations and God as its designer and builder. Verses 13-16 say that he and the others died without receiving what was promised, "seeking a homeland" and desiring "a better country, that is, a heavenly one," and that God "has prepared for them a city." --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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