3748 verses about Suffering

“I have been silent a long time. I have been quiet and restrained myself. Now I will cry out like a travailing woman. I will both gasp and pant.

But this is a robbed and plundered people. All of them are snared in holes, and they are hidden in prisons. They have become captives, and no one delivers; and a plunder, and no one says, ‘Restore them!’

Who gave Jacob as plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Didn’t Yahweh, he against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in his ways, and they disobeyed his law.

Therefore he poured the fierceness of his anger on him, and the strength of battle; and it set him on fire all around, but he didn’t know; and it burned him, but he didn’t take it to heart.”

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and flame will not scorch you.

I was angry with my people. I profaned my inheritance, and gave them into your hand. You showed them no mercy. You laid a very heavy yoke on the aged.

Therefore disaster will come on you. You won’t know when it dawns. Mischief will fall on you. You won’t be able to put it away. Desolation will come on you suddenly, which you don’t understand.

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.

But I said, “I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength in vain for nothing; yet surely the justice due to me is with Yahweh, and my reward with my God.”

Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, says to him whom man despises, to him whom the nation abhors, to a servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and rise up; princes, and they shall worship; because of Yahweh who is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun strike them: for he who has mercy on them will lead them. He will guide them by springs of water.

But Zion said, “Yahweh has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.”

Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has conceived these for me, since I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering back and forth? Who has brought these up? Behold, I was left alone. Where were these?’”

Why, when I came, was there no one? when I called, why was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it can’t redeem? or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea. I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stink, because there is no water, and die for thirst.

The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary. He wakens morning by morning, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious. I have not turned back.

I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who plucked off the hair. I didn’t hide my face from shame and spitting.

For the Lord Yahweh will help me. Therefore I have not been confounded. Therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be disappointed.

Who among you fears Yahweh, and obeys the voice of his servant? He who walks in darkness, and has no light, let him trust in Yahweh’s name, and rely on his God.

Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who adorn yourselves with torches around yourselves; walk in the flame of your fire, and among the torches that you have kindled. You will have this from my hand: You will lie down in sorrow.

Awake, awake! Stand up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from Yahweh’s hand the cup of his wrath. You have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.

There is no one to guide her among all the sons to whom she has given birth; and there is no one who takes her by the hand among all the sons who she has brought up.

These two things have happened to you— who will grieve with you?— desolation and destruction, and famine and the sword. How can I comfort you?

Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of all the streets, like an antelope in a net. They are full of the Yahweh’s wrath, the rebuke of your God.

Therefore now hear this, you afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:

Thus says your Lord Yahweh, your God who pleads the cause of his people, “Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath. You will not drink it any more:

and I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, ‘Bow down, that we may walk over you;’ and you have laid your back as the ground, like a street to those who walk over.”

For thus says the Lord Yahweh: “My people went down at the first into Egypt to live there: and the Assyrian has oppressed them without cause.

“Now therefore, what do I do here,” says Yahweh, “seeing that my people are taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them mock,” says Yahweh, “and my name is blasphemed continually all day long.

Behold, my servant will deal wisely. He will be exalted and lifted up, and will be very high.

Just as many were astonished at you (his appearance was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men),

For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.

Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.

He was taken away by oppression and judgment; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living and stricken for the disobedience of my people?

They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his days, and Yahweh’s pleasure will prosper in his hand.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I give him a portion with the great, and he will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

For Yahweh has called you as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off,” says your God.

“For a small moment I have forsaken you; but with great mercies will I gather you.

In overflowing wrath I hid my face from you for a moment; but with everlasting loving kindness I will have mercy on you,” says Yahweh your Redeemer.

“You afflicted, tossed with storms, and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in beautiful colors, and lay your foundations with sapphires.

The righteous perish, and no one lays it to heart. Merciful men are taken away, and no one considers that the righteous is taken away from the evil.

I was angry because of the iniquity of his covetousness, and struck him; I hid myself and was angry; and he went on backsliding in the way of his heart.

I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts to him and to his mourners.

‘Why have we fasted,’ say they, ‘and you don’t see? Why have we afflicted our soul, and you don’t notice?’ “Behold, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and oppress all your laborers.

and if you pour out your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul: then your light will rise in darkness, and your obscurity will be as the noonday;

Therefore is justice far from us, and righteousness doesn’t overtake us. We look for light, but see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity.

We grope for the wall like the blind. Yes, we grope as those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight. Among those who are strong, we are like dead men.

We all roar like bears, and moan bitterly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.

“Foreigners will build up your walls, and their kings will serve you: for in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you.

to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;

to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give to them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified.

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.

But they rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit. Therefore he turned and became their enemy, and he himself fought against them.

O Yahweh, why do you make us wander from your ways, and harden our heart from your fear? Return for your servants’ sake, the tribes of your inheritance.

Your holy people possessed it but a little while. Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary.

There is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our iniquities.

Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, is burned with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste.

Will you hold yourself back for these things, Yahweh? Will you keep silent, and punish us very severely?

Behold, my servants will sing for joy of heart, but you will cry for sorrow of heart, and will wail for anguish of spirit.

Hear Yahweh’s word, you who tremble at his word: “Your brothers who hate you, who cast you out for my name’s sake, have said, ‘Let Yahweh be glorified, that we may see your joy;’ but it is those who shall be disappointed.

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

The children also of Memphis and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of your head.

But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.

For this, clothe yourself with sackcloth, lament and wail; for the fierce anger of Yahweh hasn’t turned back from us.

My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart! My heart trembles within me. I can’t hold my peace, because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

Destruction on destruction is decreed, for the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, and my curtains gone in a moment.

For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”

I will cut off the beautiful and delicate one, the daughter of Zion.

We have heard its report. Our hands become feeble. Anguish has taken hold of us, and pains as of a woman in labor.

Daughter of my people, clothe yourself with sackcloth, and wallow in ashes! Mourn, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation, for the destroyer will suddenly come on us.

Cut off your hair, and throw it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Yahweh has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.

Death will be chosen rather than life by all the residue that remain of this evil family, that remain in all the places where I have driven them,” says Yahweh of Armies.

“Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities, and let us be silent there; for Yahweh our God has put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against Yahweh.

We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay!

Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! My heart is faint within me.

For the hurt of the daughter of my people, I am hurt. I mourn. Dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then isn’t the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

Therefore Yahweh of Armies says, “Behold, I will melt them and test them; for how should I deal with the daughter of my people?

I will weep and wail for the mountains, and lament for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are burned up, so that no one passes through; Men can’t hear the voice of the livestock. Both the birds of the sky and the animals have fled. They are gone.

Who is wise enough to understand this? Who is he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why has the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?

Therefore Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.

Yahweh of Armies says, “Consider, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they may come.

Let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.

For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, ‘How we are ruined! We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’”

Yet hear Yahweh’s word, you women. Let your ear receive the word of his mouth. Teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbor lamentation.

Gather up your wares out of the land, you who live under siege.

For Yahweh says, “Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and will distress them, that they may feel it.”

Woe is me because of my injury! My wound is serious; but I said, “Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it.”

My tent has been destroyed, and all my cords are broken. My children have gone away from me, and they are no more. There is no one to spread my tent any more, to set up my curtains.

The voice of news, behold, it comes, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling place of jackals.

Yahweh, correct me, but gently; not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing.

Then the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry to the gods to which they offer incense, but they will not save them at all in the time of their trouble.