39 Bible Verses about Cruelty, examples of

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked (godless),
From the grasp of the unrighteous and ruthless man.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, read more.
without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity].

Like godless jesters at a feast,
They gnashed at me with their teeth [in malice].

O God, arrogant and insolent men have risen up against me;
A band of violent men have sought my life,
And they have not set You before them.

Whoever mocks the poor taunts his Maker,
And he who rejoices at [another’s] disaster will not go unpunished.

For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great (shocking, innumerable),
You who distress the righteous and take bribes,
And turn away from the poor in the [court of the city] gate [depriving them of justice].

Hazael said, “Why are you weeping, my lord?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the sons (descendants) of Israel. You will set their strongholds on fire, kill their young men with the sword, smash their children to pieces, and rip up their pregnant women.”

Then Menahem struck [the town of] Tiphsah and all who were in it and its borders from Tirzah; [he attacked it] because they did not surrender to him; so he struck it and ripped up all the women there who were pregnant.

Anyone who is found will be pierced through,
And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.

Therefore an uproar will arise among your people,
And all your fortresses will be destroyed,
As Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle,
When mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.

Samaria will be found guilty [and become desolate],
Because she rebelled against her God;
They will fall by the sword,
Their infants will be dashed in pieces,
And their pregnant women will be ripped open.

Yet she became an exile;
She went into captivity.
Her young children were dashed to pieces
At the head of every street;
They cast lots for her honorable men,
And all her great men were bound with chains.

When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince (sheik) of the land, saw her, he kidnapped her and lay [intimately] with her by force [humbling and offending her].

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took the Levite’s concubine and brought her outside to them; and they had relations with her and abused her all night until morning; and when daybreak came, they let her go.

But he would not listen to her; and since he was stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.

For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured and the houses plundered and the women ravished; and half of the city will be exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.

“My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished,
The grave is ready for me.

“Surely there are mockers and mockery with me,
And my eye gazes on their obstinacy and provocation.

As a crushing of my bones [with a sword], my adversaries taunt me,
While they say continually to me, “Where is your God?”

In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes, were ridiculing and mocking Him among themselves and saying, “He saved others [from death]; He cannot save Himself!

Hannah’s rival provoked her bitterly, to irritate and embarrass her, because the Lord had left her childless. So it happened year after year, whenever she went up to the house of the Lord, Peninnah provoked her; so she wept and would not eat.

“Should your boasts and babble silence men?
And shall you scoff and no one put you to shame?

All who see me laugh at me and mock me;
They [insultingly] open their lips, they shake their head, saying,

Malicious witnesses rise up;
They ask me of things that I do not know.

Remember, O Lord, the reproach of Your servants [scorned, insulted, and disgraced];
How I bear in my heart the reproach of all the many peoples,

With which Your enemies have taunted, O Lord,
With which they have mocked the footsteps of Your anointed.

My enemies taunt me all day long;
Those who ridicule me use my name as a curse.

[Jeremiah said,] O Lord, You have persuaded me and I was deceived;
You are stronger than I and You have prevailed.
I am a laughingstock all day long;
Everyone mocks me.

I have become the [object of] ridicule to all my people,
And [the subject of] their mocking song all the day.

Now when Joseph reached his brothers, they stripped him of his tunic, the [distinctive] multicolored tunic which he was wearing; then they took him and threw him into the pit. Now the pit was empty; there was no water in it.

“Simeon and Levi are brothers [equally headstrong, deceitful, vindictive, and cruel];
Their swords are weapons of violence and revenge.

“O my soul, do not come into their secret council;
Let not my glory (honor) be united with their assembly [for I knew nothing of their plot];
Because in their anger they killed men [an honored man, Shechem, and the Shechemites],
And in their self-will they lamed oxen.

“Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce;
And their wrath, for it was cruel.
I will divide and disperse them in Jacob,
And scatter them in [the midst of the land of] Israel.

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born [to the Hebrews] must be thrown into the Nile, but every daughter you shall keep alive.”

But Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes.

So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord [for help], for Jabin had nine hundred iron chariots and had oppressed and tormented the sons of Israel severely for twenty years.

Then the Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; they served the Baals, the Ashtaroth (female deities), the gods of Aram (Syria), the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. They abandoned the Lord and did not serve Him. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites, and they oppressed and crushed Israel that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites who were beyond the Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead.

Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison [in the stocks], for he was enraged with him because of this. And at the same time Asa oppressed some of the people.

Let your way [in life] be far from her,
And do not go near the door of her house [avoid even being near the places of temptation],

Or you will give your honor to others,
And your years to the cruel one,

Then afterward,” says the Lord, “I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah and his servants and the people in this city who survive the virulent disease, the sword, and the famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemy, into the hand of those who seek their lives. And he will strike them with the edge of the sword; he will not spare them nor have mercy and compassion on them.”’

Then Nebuchadnezzar in a furious rage gave a command to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego; and these men were brought before the king. Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image which I have set up? Now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image which I have made, very good. But if you do not worship, you shall be thrown at once into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can rescue you out of my hands?” read more.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to answer you on this point. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up!” Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and his facial expression changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Then he gave a command that the furnace was to be heated seven times hotter than usual. He commanded certain strong men in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego and to throw them into the furnace of blazing fire.

The princes were enraged with Jeremiah and beat him and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe—for they had made that the prison.

So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchijah the king’s son, which was in the court of the guardhouse; and they let Jeremiah down [into the cistern] with ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud. Now Ebed-melech the Ethiopian (Cushite), one of the eunuchs who was in the king’s palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern, and while the king was sitting in the Gate of Benjamin,