17 Bible Verses About Pain and Hurt

Proverbs 18:14

“The human spirit can endure in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?”

Reflection: The proverb sets two kinds of pain side by side. The human spirit can endure sickness, and the second half asks who can bear a crushed spirit. The proverb leaves the question unanswered.

Psalm 34:18

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Reflection: Psalm 34 is about the righteous crying out and being heard: “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles” (verse 17). Verse 18 names the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit as the people the Lord is close to. The next verse does not promise a life without trouble: “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: The line sits between two others about what God does. He gathers the exiles of Israel (verse 2), and he determines the number of the stars and calls each by name (verse 4). The psalm opens with a call to praise, and the healing of the brokenhearted is one of the reasons it gives.

Psalm 6:2-3

“Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?”

Reflection: According to its heading, this is a psalm of David. The pain is in body and soul at once: “my bones are in agony” and “my soul is in deep anguish.” Verse 6 adds that he floods his bed with weeping all night. The question “How long?” gets no date, but by verse 8 he can say, “the Lord has heard my weeping.”

Psalm 22:1

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?”

Reflection: David’s psalm opens with two questions: why God has forsaken him, and why he is so far from saving him. Verse 2 adds, “My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer.” Matthew 27:46 records Jesus crying out this first line from the cross, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” Later the same psalm says that God “has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one” but “has listened to his cry for help” (verse 24).

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: Here the psalmist speaks to his own soul. The same words appear at verse 5. Before them he says his tears have been his food day and night while people ask, “Where is your God?” (verse 3), and between the two refrains he says his bones “suffer mortal agony” as his foes taunt him with the same question (verse 10). The hope is in the future tense: “I will yet praise him.”

Job 3:11

“Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?”

Reflection: Job has lost his sons and daughters when a house collapsed on them (Job 1:18-19) and been struck with painful sores from head to foot (Job 2:7). His three friends sat with him seven days without a word, “because they saw how great his suffering was” (Job 2:13). Chapter 3 is what he says after that silence: he curses the day of his birth (verses 1-3), asks why he did not die at birth, and ends, “I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil” (verse 26).

Lamentations 3:21-23

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Reflection: The book mourns a deserted Jerusalem (Lamentations 1:1). Just before this passage the poet remembers “my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall,” and says “my soul is downcast within me” (verses 19-20). Verse 21 turns on “Yet”: he calls something else to mind, the Lord’s love and compassions, new every morning. The hope leads to waiting: “it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (verse 26).

Psalm 55:22

“Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”

Reflection: The hurt behind this psalm of David is betrayal. He could have endured an enemy’s insults, “But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend” (verses 12-13), whose “words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords” (verse 21). The command to cast cares on the Lord follows directly on that description. 1 Peter 5:7 gives a similar command: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

Genesis 50:20

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Reflection: After their father’s death, Joseph’s brothers fear he will pay them back “for all the wrongs we did to him” (verse 15), and they send a message asking forgiveness. Joseph weeps when he hears it. When they come and bow before him, he tells them, “Don’t be afraid,” and asks, “Am I in the place of God?” (verse 19). He then says in one sentence that they meant harm and that God meant it for good, and he promises to provide for them and their children (verse 21).

1 Peter 2:23

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Reflection: Peter is writing to slaves about submitting to their masters, “not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh” (verse 18), and about “the pain of unjust suffering” (verse 19). He points to Christ as their example (verse 21). The verse says what Jesus did not do when insulted, retaliate or threaten, and what he did instead: he entrusted himself “to him who judges justly.”

Ephesians 4:31-32

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Reflection: Paul’s list in verse 31 runs from bitterness, rage and anger to brawling, slander and malice. Two verses earlier he has forbidden “unwholesome talk” and asked for words that build others up (verse 29). The measure given for forgiving one another is the way God has forgiven “in Christ.”

Matthew 18:21-22

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”

Reflection: Peter’s question is about a brother or sister “who sins against me,” and he offers seven times as the limit. Jesus answers “seventy-seven times” and follows with a parable: a servant whose huge debt is cancelled has a fellow servant thrown into prison over a hundred silver coins (verses 23-30). It ends with a warning: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (verse 35).

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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Reflection: Paul says he was given “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me,” and gives its purpose: “in order to keep me from becoming conceited” (verse 7). He pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away. The answer is grace for the weakness, and Paul does not say in the passage what the thorn was. He names insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties among the weaknesses he delights in “for Christ’s sake.”

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: After the greeting, Paul begins the letter by praising “the God of all comfort” and gives that comfort a direction: those who receive it can comfort others “in any trouble.” A few verses later he describes troubles in the province of Asia so heavy that “we despaired of life itself” (verse 8).

Isaiah 53:5

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Reflection: The servant in Isaiah 53 is “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (verse 3), and verse 4 says “he took up our pain and bore our suffering.” In verse 5 the wounds are the servant’s and the healing is the people’s. 1 Peter 2:24 quotes the last line and applies it to Christ’s death on the cross: “by his wounds you have been healed.”

1 Peter 5:10

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”

Reflection: Peter reminds his readers that “the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (verse 9). The promise of restoration comes “after you have suffered a little while,” without saying how long that will be. It is God himself who will restore them and make them strong, firm and steadfast.