Bible Verses About Pain
Introduction
Pain is one of the most universal human experiences and one of the most theologically challenging. It does not sort itself neatly by deserving. It visits the faithful and the faithless alike, the young and the old, those who have done everything right and those who have not. And it raises questions that do not resolve easily: Where is God when it hurts? Does he know? Does he care? Is there any meaning in this?
The Bible does not offer a philosophical treatise on the problem of suffering. What it offers is something more useful and more honest. It gives language for the experience of pain, testimony from people who have been inside it and survived, and a God who does not observe pain from a safe distance but enters it. These verses speak to anyone in the middle of something that hurts and anyone trying to find words for what they are carrying.
What the Bible Means When It Talks About Pain
Scripture uses a range of words for pain that cover physical suffering, emotional anguish, grief, and the deep distress of the soul. The Hebrew mak'ob and the Greek lupeo both carry the sense of pain that goes beyond the body into the inner life. The Bible does not separate physical and emotional pain into distinct categories the way modern medicine sometimes does. Suffering in Scripture is often whole-person suffering, and the God who attends to it attends to all of it.
What is equally significant is that the Bible does not tell sufferers to hide their pain or dress it up in spiritual language. The psalms of lament are among the most raw and honest pieces of writing in any ancient literature. Job refuses to pretend his suffering is less than it is. Jeremiah curses the day of his birth. The Bible makes room for the full weight of human pain, and in doing so gives permission for honesty that much religious culture does not.
Bible Verses About God's Presence in Pain
Psalm 34:18 — ("The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.") This verse does not promise the removal of pain. It promises proximity. God does not watch the brokenhearted from a distance. He is close to them, closer than the pain itself.
Isaiah 43:2 — ("When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.") The promise is not that the waters will be shallow or the fire cool. It is that God will be present in both. Pain does not signal the absence of God. It is often where his presence is most keenly felt.
Psalm 23:4 — ("Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.") David does not say he will avoid the darkest valley. He says he will walk through it, and that God walks with him. The comfort is not the absence of the valley but the presence of the shepherd in it.
Matthew 27:46 — ("About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' which means 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'") Jesus quotes Psalm 22 from the cross. The God who enters human flesh also enters the experience of forsakenness. There is no form of human pain, including the pain of feeling abandoned by God, that he has not inhabited from the inside.
Romans 8:38-39 — ("For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.") Pain cannot sever the connection between God and those who belong to him. The list Paul gives is exhaustive by design. Nothing in the entire created order, including suffering, is able to break that bond.
Bible Verses About the Honesty of Pain
Job 3:3 — ("After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.") Job's response to devastating loss is not a sermon about God's sovereignty. It is a cry of anguish. Scripture records it without correction. The honesty of Job's pain is not a failure of faith. It is faith being real.
Psalm 22:1-2 — ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.") The psalmist does not soften his experience to protect God's reputation. He names the distance he feels, the silence he hears, the absence that is real to him. The fact that this is Scripture means God himself has authorized this kind of honesty.
Lamentations 3:1-3 — ("I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the LORD's wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long.") Jeremiah's lament in the book of Lamentations is unflinching. He attributes his suffering to God and does not flinch from that attribution. The Bible contains this kind of language because human suffering sometimes feels exactly like this.
Psalm 88:13-14 — ("But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?") Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm, and it ends without resolution. There is no turn to praise at the end, no reassuring conclusion. It simply ends in darkness. Scripture includes it because some seasons of pain end without resolution, and the person in them needs to know they are not alone.
Jeremiah 20:18 — ("Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?") The prophet who carried God's word to an unresponsive nation reaches a point of despair that most readers find shocking. It is in the Bible because God does not require his servants to perform happiness they do not feel.
Bible Verses About God's Comfort in Pain
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.") God is named as the God of all comfort. The comfort he gives is not described as eliminating trouble but as sustaining people within it and equipping them to extend the same comfort to others.
Isaiah 40:31 — ("But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.") The renewal promised here follows waiting and hoping. It is not instantaneous. But the word renew suggests that the strength which pain has depleted is genuinely restored, not merely supplemented.
Psalm 147:3 — ("He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.") The image of binding wounds is tender and practical. God does not simply declare people healed. He attends to the wound itself with care and intention.
John 11:35 — ("Jesus wept.") The shortest verse in the Bible carries enormous theological weight. Standing before the tomb of Lazarus, knowing he is about to raise him, Jesus weeps. His grief is not performance. He is genuinely moved by the pain of those he loves. God is not unmoved by human suffering.
Revelation 21:4 — ("He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.") The final promise of Scripture addresses pain directly. Every tear wiped away by God himself. No more death, mourning, crying, or pain. This is not wishful thinking. It is the destination of the entire biblical story.
Bible Verses About Suffering and Growth
Romans 5:3-4 — ("Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.") Paul does not say suffering is good. He says suffering, in the hands of God, produces something. The chain from suffering to hope passes through perseverance and character. None of it is instant, and none of it is automatic.
James 1:2-4 — ("Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.") James does not command emotional happiness in the face of trials. He commands a reoriented perspective: consider what the trial is producing. The joy is not in the pain but in what the pain, over time, yields.
1 Peter 1:6-7 — ("In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in various trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.") Faith tested by suffering is worth more than gold refined by fire. Peter does not minimize the grief. He locates it within a larger story that gives it meaning without explaining it away.
Hebrews 12:11 — ("No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.") The author of Hebrews acknowledges plainly that discipline is painful. The later harvest is not guaranteed to all who suffer but to those who allow suffering to train them rather than simply endure it.
2 Corinthians 4:17 — ("For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.") Paul describes his sufferings as light and momentary, and those sufferings included beatings, imprisonment, shipwreck, and near-death experiences. He is not being dismissive. He is establishing proportion by the scale of eternity.
Bible Verses About Crying Out to God in Pain
Psalm 18:6 — ("In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.") The movement from distress to crying out to God being heard is the pattern of the psalms. David does not resolve his pain by thinking more clearly about God. He cries out. And God hears.
Psalm 56:8 — ("Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll — are they not in your record? Put them in your wineskin.") The image of God keeping a record of tears is one of the most tender in all of Scripture. Every tear is noticed, recorded, held. The suffering that feels invisible to everyone else is fully visible to God.
Habakkuk 1:2 — ("How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you do not save?") The prophetic tradition gives permission for bringing God questions that have no easy answers. Habakkuk does not accept silence. He presses God with the reality of what he sees and what he cannot understand.
Psalm 102:1-2 — ("Hear my prayer, LORD; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.") The urgency of this prayer is authentic. There is no formal distance between the psalmist and God. The person in pain speaks directly, desperately, and God does not find that disrespectful.
Psalm 55:22 — ("Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.") The casting of cares is an active movement. It is the deliberate transfer of the weight of pain to God. The promise is not release from the situation but sustaining within it.
Bible Verses About the Hope Beyond Pain
Romans 8:18 — ("I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.") Paul establishes proportion. Present suffering is real. Future glory is more real and incomparably greater. The comparison is not meant to dismiss suffering but to locate it within a story that ends somewhere beyond it.
Psalm 30:5 — ("For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.") The night of weeping is real and it may last a long time. But morning comes. The arc of the biblical story bends toward joy. Pain is not the final word.
Isaiah 61:3 — ("To provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.") The reversal promised here is specific and thorough. Ashes become a crown. Mourning becomes joy. Despair becomes praise. God does not just remove pain. He replaces it with its opposite.
John 16:20 — ("Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.") Jesus speaks these words to his disciples before the crucifixion. The grief is real and coming. But the turn to joy is also real and coming. Both parts of the promise are equally certain.
1 Thessalonians 4:13 — ("Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.") Paul does not tell the grieving not to grieve. He tells them not to grieve as those without hope. The distinction matters. Grief is appropriate. Hopelessness is not.
A Simple Way to Pray These Verses
Pain rarely produces eloquent prayer. These verses can give words when a person has none of their own.
Psalm 34:18 — ("The LORD is close to the brokenhearted.") Response: "I am brokenhearted. Come close. I need to feel what I believe."
Psalm 56:8 — ("You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.") Response: "You see this. You are keeping count. That matters to me more than I can say."
Romans 8:38-39 — ("Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God.") Response: "I need this to be true right now. Hold onto me even when I cannot hold onto you."
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Bible say about pain and suffering? The Bible does not offer a single explanation for pain but addresses it from multiple angles. It gives language for honest lament. It presents a God who is present in pain rather than absent from it. It holds out the promise that suffering, in God's hands, can produce perseverance, character, and hope. And it points toward a final reversal in which every tear is wiped away. The Bible takes pain seriously without making it the last word.
Does God care about our pain? Yes. Scripture presents God as the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3). Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). God is described as keeping count of tears (Psalm 56:8) and as particularly close to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). The incarnation itself is the ultimate evidence that God does not observe human pain from a distance but enters it.
Is it okay to be angry at God when in pain? The psalms of lament and the book of Job suggest that honest expression of anguish, including anger and confusion, is not a failure of faith but a form of it. The key is that the anger is directed toward God rather than away from him. The person who cries out to God in anger is still in relationship with God. The psalms record this kind of prayer and God does not rebuke it.
Why does God allow pain? Scripture does not give a single answer to this question. It acknowledges that some pain comes from the consequences of sin, some from living in a broken world, and some from God's refining purposes in a person's life. Job's story is specifically designed to resist simple explanations. What Scripture consistently maintains is that God is present in pain, that he is not indifferent to it, and that he is working in it toward purposes that exceed what can be seen in the middle of the suffering.
How do you find God in the middle of pain? The psalms model the path most consistently: cry out, be honest about what you are experiencing, bring the full weight of it to God rather than managing it alone, and wait. Isaiah 43:2 promises that God is present in the waters and the fire even when he cannot be felt. The experience of his presence in pain is often not immediate but comes through sustained, honest engagement with him rather than managed distance from him.
