57 Bible Verses about Suffering, Hardship

The rich man’s wealth is his fortress;
The ruin of the poor is their poverty.

For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor in your land.’

“Behold, as wild donkeys in the desert,
The poor go to their work, diligently seeking food;
As bread for their children in the desert.

“They harvest their fodder in a field [that is not their own],
And glean the vineyard of the wicked.

“They spend the night naked, without clothing,
And have no covering against the cold.
read more.

“They are wet from the rain of the mountains
And cling to the rock for lack of shelter.

“Others snatch the fatherless [infants] from the breast [to sell or make them slaves],
And against the poor they take a pledge [of clothing].

“They cause the poor to go about naked without clothing,
And they take away the sheaves [of grain] from the hungry.

“Within the walls [of the wicked] the poor make [olive] oil;
They tread [the grapes in] the wine presses, but thirst.

For you always have the poor with you; but you will not always have Me.

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do something good to them; but you will not always have Me.

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.”

They wandered in the wilderness in a [solitary] desert region;
And did not find a way to an inhabited city.

Hungry and thirsty,
They fainted.

When the seven years of plenty came to an end in the land of Egypt, the seven years of famine began to come, just as Joseph had said [they would]; the famine was in all the [surrounding] lands, but in the land of Egypt there was bread (food). So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried out to Pharaoh for food; and Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph; do whatever he says to you.” read more.
When the famine was spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold [surplus grain] to the Egyptians; and the famine grew [extremely] severe in the land of Egypt. And [the people of] all countries came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the [known] earth.

Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went into the Wilderness of Shur; they went [a distance of] three days (about thirty-three miles) in the wilderness and found no water. Then they came to Marah, but they could not drink its waters because they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah (bitter). The people [grew discontented and] grumbled at Moses, saying, “What are we going to drink?”

The whole congregation of the Israelites [grew discontented and] murmured and rebelled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the Israelites said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate bread until we were full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this entire assembly with hunger.”

Then all the congregation of the children of Israel moved on from the Wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water so we may [have something to] drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you tempt the Lord and try His patience?” But the people were thirsty for water; and the people murmured against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

The rabble among them [who followed Israel from Egypt] had greedy desires [for familiar and delicious food], and the Israelites wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate freely and without cost in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there is nothing at all [in the way of food] to be seen but this manna.”

It happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” read more.
So he set out and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks [for firewood]. He called out to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a jar, so that I may drink.” As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar. See, I am gathering a few sticks so that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it [as our last meal] and die.”

Now there was a great outcry of the [poorer] people and their wives against their Jewish brothers [to whom they were deeply in debt]. For there were some who were saying, “We, along with our sons and our daughters, are many; therefore allow us to get grain, so that we may eat and survive.” There were others who were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to buy grain because of the famine.” read more.
There were also others who were saying, “We have borrowed money on our fields and vineyards for the [Persian] king’s [heavy] tax. Now our flesh (skin) is the same as that of our brothers (relatives), and our children are like their children, yet here we are forcing (selling) our sons and our daughters to be slaves; and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are powerless [to redeem them] because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”

After He had gone without food for forty days and forty nights, He became hungry.

for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they ended, He was hungry.

Then to Adam the Lord God said, “Because you have listened [attentively] to the voice of your wife, and have eaten [fruit] from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’;

The ground is [now] under a curse because of you;
In sorrow and toil you shall eat [the fruit] of it
All the days of your life.

“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you shall eat the plants of the field.

“By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread
Until you return to the ground,
For from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not lost their young, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks. I did not bring you the torn carcasses [of the animals attacked by predators]; I [personally] took the loss. You required of me [to make good] everything that was stolen, whether it occurred by day or night. This was my situation: by day the heat consumed me and by night the cold, and I could not sleep. read more.
These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for [my share of] your flocks, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and [the Feared One] of Isaac, had not been with me, most certainly you would have sent me away now empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and humiliation and the [exhausting] labor of my hands, so He rendered judgment and rebuked you last night.”

And the people sent messengers and summoned him. So when Jeroboam and all Israel came, they spoke to Rehoboam, saying, “Your father [King Solomon] made our yoke hard (heavy, difficult); so now lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.”

For you remember, believers, our labor and hardship. We worked night and day [practicing our trade] in order not to be a [financial] burden to any of you while we proclaimed the gospel of God to you.

“Because of the multitudes of oppressions the people cry out;
They cry for help because of the [violent] arm of the mighty.

So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with hard labor. And the sons of Israel built Pithom and Raamses as storage cities for Pharaoh.

Now it happened after a long time [about forty years] that the king of Egypt died. And the children of Israel (Jacob) groaned and sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out. And their cry for help because of their bondage ascended to God.

But the number of bricks which they were making before, you shall [still] require of them; you are not to reduce it in the least. For they are idle and lazy; that is why they cry, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ Let labor be heavier on the men, and let them work [hard] at it so that they will pay no attention to [their God’s] lying words.”

Now one of the wives of a man of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha [for help], saying “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant [reverently] feared the Lord; but the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves [in payment for a loan].”

“Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy,
Now I will arise,” says the Lord; “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

Be gracious and compassionate to me, O Lord, for I am in trouble;
My eye is clouded and weakened by grief, my soul and my body also.

For my life is spent with sorrow
And my years with sighing;
My strength has failed because of my iniquity,
And even my body has wasted away.

Because of all my enemies I have become a reproach and disgrace,
Especially to my neighbors,
And an object of dread to my acquaintances;
Those who see me on the street run from me.
read more.

I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.

For I have heard the slander and whispering of many,
Terror is on every side;
While they schemed together against me,
They plotted to take away my life.

For the Lord of hosts has said,

“Cut down her trees
And build a siege [mound] against Jerusalem.
This is the city which must be punished;
There is nothing but oppression inside her [walls].

Proclaim on the fortresses in Ashdod (Philistia) and on the citadels in the land of Egypt, and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria, and see the great confusion within her and the oppressions and abuse of authority in her midst.

Look! The wages that you have [fraudulently] withheld from the laborers who have mowed your fields are crying out [against you for vengeance]; and the cries of the harvesters have come to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.

So we carried on with the work with half of them holding spears from dawn until the stars came out. At that time I also said to the people, “Let each man with his servant spend the night inside Jerusalem so that they may serve as a guard for us at night and a laborer during the day.” So neither I, my brothers (relatives), my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each took his weapon [even] to the water.

Moses told his father-in-law about all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and about all the hardship that had happened during the journey, and how the Lord had rescued them.

Then the king said to Abiathar the priest, “Go to Anathoth to your own fields, for you certainly deserve to die; but I will not put you to death this day, because you carried the ark of the Lord God before my father David, and you suffered everything that my father endured.”

Three of the thirty chief men went down to the rock to David, into the cave of Adullam, while the army of the Philistines was camped in the Valley of Rephaim. David was then in the stronghold, while the garrison of the Philistines was in Bethlehem. David had a craving and said, “Oh that someone would give me a drink of water from the well of Bethlehem, which is next to the gate!” read more.
Then the three [mighty men] broke through the camp of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem which was next to the gate, and brought it to David. But David would not drink it; he poured it out to the Lord [as an offering]; and he said, “Far be it from me before my God that I would do this thing! Shall I drink the blood of these men who have put their lives in jeopardy? For they brought it at the risk of their lives.” So he would not drink it. These things the three mighty men did.

The fourteenth night had come and we were drifting and being driven about in the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors began to suspect that they were approaching some land. So they took soundings [using a weighted line] and found [the depth to be] twenty fathoms (120 feet); and a little farther on they sounded again and found [the depth to be] fifteen fathoms (90 feet). Then fearing that we might run aground somewhere on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern [to slow the ship] and kept wishing for daybreak to come. read more.
But as the sailors were trying to escape [secretly] from the ship and had let down the skiff into the sea, pretending that they were going to lay out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men remain on the ship, you cannot be saved.” Then the soldiers cut away the ropes that held the skiff and let it fall and drift away. While they waited for the day to dawn, Paul encouraged them all [and told them] to have some food, saying, “This is the fourteenth day that you have been constantly on watch and going without food, having eaten nothing. So I urge you to eat some food, for this is for your survival; for not a hair from the head of any of you will perish.” Having said this, he took bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all, and he broke it and began to eat. Then all of them were encouraged and their spirits improved, and they also ate some food. All told there were two hundred and seventy-six of us aboard the ship. After they had eaten enough, they began to lighten the ship by throwing the wheat [from Egypt] overboard into the sea. When day came, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach, and they decided to run the ship ashore there if they could. So they cut the cables and severed the anchors and left them in the sea while at the same time unlashing the ropes of the rudders; and after hoisting the foresail to the wind, they headed steadily for the beach. But striking a reef with waves breaking in on either side, they ran the ship aground. The prow (forward point) stuck fast and remained immovable, while the stern began to break up under the [violent] force of the waves. The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, so that none of them would dive overboard and swim [to land] and escape; but the centurion, wanting to save Paul, kept them from [carrying out] their plan. He commanded those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to the shore; and [he commanded] the rest to follow, some on [floating] planks, and others on various things from the ship. And so it was that all of them were brought safely to land.

“Because you did not serve the Lord your God with a heart full of joy and gladness for the abundance of all things [with which He blessed you], you will therefore serve your enemies whom the Lord sends against you, in hunger and in thirst, in nakedness and in lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke [of slavery] on your neck until He has destroyed you.

He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; it was He who brought water for you out of the flinty rock.

And the Egyptians treated us badly and oppressed us, and imposed hard labor on us. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers for help, and He heard our voice and saw our suffering and our labor and our [cruel] oppression;

O Lord, remember on David’s behalf
All his hardship and affliction;

but we commend ourselves in every way as servants of God: in great endurance, in sufferings, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in riots, in labors, in sleepless nights, in hunger,

For you are recognizing [more clearly] the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [His astonishing kindness, His generosity, His gracious favor], that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich (abundantly blessed).

They preached the good news to that city and made many disciples, then they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening and establishing the hearts of the disciples; encouraging them to remain firm in the faith, saying, “It is through many tribulations and hardships that we must enter the kingdom of God.”

To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty; we are continually poorly dressed, and we are roughly treated, and wander homeless. We work [for our living], working hard with our own hands. When we are reviled and verbally abused, we bless. When we are persecuted, we take it patiently and endure. When we are slandered, we try to be conciliatory and answer softly. We have become like the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.

For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about our trouble in [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], how we were utterly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [itself]. Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the sentence of death [and were convinced that we would die, but this happened] so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.

Are they [self-proclaimed] servants of Christ?—I am speaking as if I were out of my mind—I am more so [for I exceed them]; with far more labors, with far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, and often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent adrift on the sea; read more.
many times on journeys, [exposed to] danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own countrymen, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger on the sea, danger among those posing as believers; in labor and hardship, often unable to sleep, in hunger and thirst, often [driven to] fasting [for lack of food], in cold and exposure [without adequate clothing]. Besides those external things, there is the daily [inescapable] pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel [his] weakness? Who is made to sin, and I am not on fire [with sorrow and concern]?

Not that I speak from [any personal] need, for I have learned to be content [and self-sufficient through Christ, satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or uneasy] regardless of my circumstances. I know how to get along and live humbly [in difficult times], and I also know how to enjoy abundance and live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret [of facing life], whether well-fed or going hungry, whether having an abundance or being in need. I can do all things [which He has called me to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers me [to fulfill His purpose—I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency; I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.] read more.
Nevertheless, it was right of you to share [with me] in my difficulties.

Take with me your share of hardship [passing through the difficulties which you are called to endure], like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

For you showed sympathy and deep concern for those who were imprisoned, and you joyfully accepted the [unjust] seizure of your belongings and the confiscation of your property, conscious of the fact that you have a better possession and a lasting one [prepared for you in heaven].

They were stoned [to death], they were sawn in two, they were lured with tempting offers [to renounce their faith], they were put to death by the sword; they went about wrapped in the skins of sheep and goats, utterly destitute, oppressed, cruelly treated (people of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and [living in] caves and holes in the ground.

You must submit to [correction for the purpose of] discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

and [I know that] you [who believe] are enduring patiently and are bearing up for My name’s sake, and that you have not grown weary [of being faithful to the truth].

Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the sentence of death [and were convinced that we would die, but this happened] so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.

And you will be hated by everyone because of [your association with] My name, but it is the one who has patiently persevered and endured to the end who will be saved.

You will be hated by everyone because of [your association with] My name, but the one who [patiently perseveres empowered by the Holy Spirit and] endures to the end, he will be saved.

Blessed [happy, spiritually prosperous, favored by God] is the man who is steadfast under trial and perseveres when tempted; for when he has passed the test and been approved, he will receive the [victor’s] crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

You know we call those blessed [happy, spiritually prosperous, favored by God] who were steadfast and endured [difficult circumstances]. You have heard of the patient endurance of Job and you have seen the Lord’s outcome [how He richly blessed Job]. The Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.

For this finds favor, if a person endures the sorrow of suffering unjustly because of an awareness of [the will of] God.