3748 verses about suffering

To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.

It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field.

By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

From now on, when you till the ground, it won’t yield its strength to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.”

Cain said to Yahweh, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, you have driven me out today from the surface of the ground. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. Whoever finds me will kill me.”

He named him Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, caused by the ground which Yahweh has cursed.”

Sarai was barren. She had no child.

There was a famine in the land. Abram went down into Egypt to live as a foreigner there, for the famine was severe in the land.

He said to Abram, “Know for sure that your offspring will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them. They will afflict them four hundred years.

Sarai said to Abram, “This wrong is your fault. I gave my servant into your bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. Yahweh judge between me and you.”

But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your maid is in your hand. Do to her whatever is good in your eyes.” Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her face.

He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where did you come from? Where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the face of my mistress Sarai.”

Yahweh’s angel said to her, “Behold, you are with child, and will bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because Yahweh has heard your affliction.

The thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight on account of his son.

Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder; and gave her the child, and sent her away. She departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

The water in the bottle was spent, and she put the child under one of the shrubs.

She went and sat down opposite him, a good way off, about a bow shot away. For she said, “Don’t let me see the death of the child.” She sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept.

God heard the voice of the boy. The angel of God called to Hagar out of the sky, and said to her, “What ails you, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. For God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. He took in his hand the fire and the knife. They both went together.

Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to kill his son.

“I am a stranger and a foreigner living with you. Give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

The children struggled together within her. She said, “If it is so, why do I live?” She went to inquire of Yahweh.

Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me, and have sent me away from you?”

They grieved Isaac’s and Rebekah’s spirits.

When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, my father.”

By your sword will you live, and you will serve your brother. It will happen, when you will break loose, that you shall shake his yoke from off your neck.”

Yahweh saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she named him Reuben. For she said, “Because Yahweh has looked at my affliction; for now my husband will love me.”

She conceived again, and bore a son, and said, “Because Yahweh has heard that I am hated, he has therefore given me this son also.” She named him Simeon.

This was my situation: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from my eyes.

When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled.

The sun rose on him as he passed over Peniel, and he limped because of his thigh.

They traveled from Bethel. There was still some distance to come to Ephrath, and Rachel travailed. She had hard labor.

When she was in hard labor, the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, for now you will have another son.”

and they took him, and threw him into the pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it.

He returned to his brothers, and said, “The child is no more; and I, where will I go?”

He recognized it, and said, “It is my son’s coat. An evil animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces.”

Jacob tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days.

All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, “For I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning.” His father wept for him.

Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were bound, and he was there in custody.

But Yahweh was with Joseph, and showed kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

The captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph, and he took care of them. They stayed in prison many days.

Joseph came in to them in the morning, and saw them, and saw that they were sad.

He asked Pharaoh’s officers who were with him in custody in his master’s house, saying, “Why do you look so sad today?”

For indeed, I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.”

The seven thin and ugly cattle that came up after them are seven years, and also the seven empty heads of grain blasted with the east wind; they will be seven years of famine.

and the plenty will not be known in the land by reason of that famine which follows; for it will be very grievous.

Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, “For”, he said, “God has made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.”

The name of the second, he called Ephraim: “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

They said to one another, “We are certainly guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we wouldn’t listen. Therefore this distress has come upon us.”

Jacob, their father, said to them, “You have bereaved me of my children! Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me.”

He said, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left. If harm happens to him along the way in which you go, then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”

The famine was severe in the land.

Israel said, “Why did you treat me so badly, telling the man that you had another brother?”

May God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may release to you your other brother and Benjamin. If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”

If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.’

it will happen, when he sees that the boy is no more, that he will die. Your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol.

Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

There was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.

As for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to come to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (also called Bethlehem).”

The archers have severely grieved him, shot at him, and persecuted him:

They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and severe lamentation. He mourned for his father seven days.

When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, “This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.” Therefore its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is today, to save many people alive.

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.

But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They were grieved because of the children of Israel.

The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve,

and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.

Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”

In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his brothers, and looked at their burdens. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his brothers.

In the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.

God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

God saw the children of Israel, and God was concerned about them.

Yahweh said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

Now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. Moreover I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

The people believed, and when they heard that Yahweh had visited the children of Israel, and that he had seen their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.

The king of Egypt said to them, “Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people from their work? Get back to your burdens!”

“You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick, as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.

The number of the bricks, which they made before, you require from them. You shall not diminish anything of it, for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’

Let heavier work be laid on the men, that they may labor in it; and don’t let them pay any attention to lying words.”

The taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spoke to the people, saying, “This is what Pharaoh says: ‘I will not give you straw.

Go yourselves, get straw where you can find it, for nothing of your work shall be diminished.’”

So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw.

The taskmasters were urgent saying, “Fulfill your work quota daily, as when there was straw!”

The officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, “Why haven’t you fulfilled your quota both yesterday and today, in making brick as before?”

Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, saying, “Why do you deal this way with your servants?

No straw is given to your servants, and they tell us, ‘Make brick!’ and behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people.”

Go therefore now, and work, for no straw shall be given to you, yet you shall deliver the same number of bricks!”

The officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble, when it was said, “You shall not diminish anything from your daily quota of bricks!”

They met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came out from Pharaoh:

and they said to them, “May Yahweh look at you, and judge, because you have made us a stench to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

Moses returned to Yahweh, and said, “Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why is it that you have sent me?

For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people; and you have not rescued your people at all.”

Moreover I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant.

Moses spoke so to the children of Israel, but they didn’t listen to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

All the Egyptians dug around the river for water to drink; for they couldn’t drink the river water.

Seven days were fulfilled, after Yahweh had struck the river.

behold, Yahweh’s hand is on your livestock which are in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the herds, and on the flocks with a very grievous pestilence.