20 Bible Verses about Amusements

Even in laughter is the heart pained, And the latter end of joy is affliction.

And his sons have gone and made a banquet -- the house of each in his day -- and have sent and called to their three sisters to eat and to drink with them;

Whoso is loving mirth is a poor man, Whoso is loving wine and oil maketh no wealth.

and they rise early on the morrow, and cause burnt-offerings to ascend, and bring nigh peace-offerings; and the people sit down to eat and to drink, and rise up to play.

And it cometh to pass, when their heart is glad, that they say, 'Call for Samson, and he doth play before us;' and they call for Samson out of the prison-house, and he playeth before them, and they cause him to stand between the pillars.

And Abner saith unto Joab, 'Let the youths rise, I pray thee, and they play before us;' and Joab saith, 'Let them rise.'

They send forth as a flock their sucklings, And their children skip, They lift themselves up at timbrel and harp, And rejoice at the sound of an organ.

I said in my heart, 'Pray, come, I try thee with mirth, and look thou on gladness;' and lo, even it is vanity. Of laughter I said, 'Foolish!' and of mirth, 'What is this it is doing?'

And harp, and psaltery, tabret, and pipe, And wine, have been their banquets, And the work of Jehovah they behold not, Yea, the work of His hands they have not seen.

Who are taking part according to the psaltery, Like David they invented for themselves instruments of music;

And broad places of the city are full of boys and girls, Playing in its broad places.

and he saith, 'It is not the voice of the crying of might, nor is it the voice of the crying of weakness -- a voice of singing I am hearing.' And it cometh to pass, when he hath drawn near unto the camp, that he seeth the calf, and the dancing, and the anger of Moses burneth, and he casteth out of his hands the tables, and breaketh them under the mount;

And Moses seeth the people that it is unbridled, for Aaron hath made it unbridled for contempt among its withstanders,

And it cometh to pass, in their coming in, in David's returning from smiting the Philistine, that the women come out from all the cities of Israel to sing -- also the dancers -- to meet Saul the king, with tabrets, with joy, and with three-stringed instruments; and the women answer -- those playing, and say, 'Saul hath smitten among his thousands, And David among his myriads.'

for sufficient to us is the past time of life the will of the nations to have wrought, having walked in lasciviousnesses, desires, excesses of wines, revellings, drinking-bouts, and unlawful idolatries,

And a seasonable day having come, when Herod on his birthday was making a supper to his great men, and to the chiefs of thousands, and to the first men of Galilee,

they are like to children, to those sitting in a market-place, and calling one to another, and saying, We piped to you, and ye did not dance, we mourned to you, and ye did not weep!

and all Athenians, and the strangers sojourning, for nothing else were at leisure but to say something, and to hear some newer thing.