57 Bible Verses about Suffering, Hardship

The wealth of a rich person is like a fortified city, but the poor are brought to ruin by their poverty.

There will never cease to be some poor people in the land; therefore, I am commanding you to make sure you open your hand to your fellow Israelites who are needy and poor in your land.

Like wild donkeys in the desert they go out to their labor, seeking diligently for food; the wasteland provides food for them and for their children. They reap fodder in the field, and glean in the vineyard of the wicked. They spend the night naked because they lack clothing; they have no covering against the cold.read more.
They are soaked by mountain rains and huddle in the rocks because they lack shelter. The fatherless child is snatched from the breast, the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. They go about naked, without clothing, and go hungry while they carry the sheaves. They press out the olive oil between the rows of olive trees; they tread the winepresses while they are thirsty.

For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me!

For you will always have the poor with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want. But you will not always have me!

For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me!"

They wandered through the wilderness on a desert road; they found no city in which to live. They were hungry and thirsty; they fainted from exhaustion.

The seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt came to an end. Then the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had predicted. There was famine in all the other lands, but throughout the land of Egypt there was food. When all the land of Egypt experienced the famine, the people cried out to Pharaoh for food. Pharaoh said to all the people of Egypt, "Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you."read more.
While the famine was over all the earth, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians. The famine was severe throughout the land of Egypt. People from every country came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain because the famine was severe throughout the earth.

Then Moses led Israel to journey away from the Red Sea. They went out to the Desert of Shur, walked for three days into the desert, and found no water. Then they came to Marah, but they were not able to drink the waters of Marah, because they were bitter. (That is why its name was Marah.) So the people murmured against Moses, saying, "What can we drink?"

The entire company of Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron in the desert. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this desert to kill this whole assembly with hunger!"

The whole community of the Israelites traveled on their journey from the Desert of Sin according to the Lord's instruction, and they pitched camp in Rephidim. Now there was no water for the people to drink. So the people contended with Moses, and they said, "Give us water to drink!" Moses said to them, "Why do you contend with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people were very thirsty there for water, and they murmured against Moses and said, "Why in the world did you bring us up out of Egypt -- to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?"

Now the mixed multitude who were among them craved more desirable foods, and so the Israelites wept again and said, "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are dried up, and there is nothing at all before us except this manna!"

After a while, the stream dried up because there had been no rain in the land. The Lord told him, "Get up, go to Zarephath in Sidonian territory, and live there. I have already told a widow who lives there to provide for you."read more.
So he got up and went to Zarephath. When he went through the city gate, there was a widow gathering wood. He called out to her, "Please give me a cup of water, so I can take a drink." As she went to get it, he called out to her, "Please bring me a piece of bread." She said, "As certainly as the Lord your God lives, I have no food, except for a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. Right now I am gathering a couple of sticks for a fire. Then I'm going home to make one final meal for my son and myself. After we have eaten that, we will die of starvation."

Then there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews. There were those who said, "With our sons and daughters, we are many. We must obtain grain in order to eat and stay alive." There were others who said, "We are putting up our fields, our vineyards, and our houses as collateral in order to obtain grain during the famine."read more.
Then there were those who said, "We have borrowed money to pay our taxes to the king on our fields and our vineyards. And now, though we share the same flesh and blood as our fellow countrymen, and our children are just like their children, still we have found it necessary to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have been subjected to slavery, while we are powerless to help, since our fields and vineyards now belong to other people."

After he fasted forty days and forty nights he was famished.

where for forty days he endured temptations from the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were completed, he was famished.

But to Adam he said, "Because you obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return."

"I have been with you for the past twenty years. Your ewes and female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten rams from your flocks. Animals torn by wild beasts I never brought to you; I always absorbed the loss myself. You always made me pay for every missing animal, whether it was taken by day or at night. I was consumed by scorching heat during the day and by piercing cold at night, and I went without sleep.read more.
This was my lot for twenty years in your house: I worked like a slave for you -- fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, but you changed my wages ten times! If the God of my father -- the God of Abraham, the one whom Isaac fears -- had not been with me, you would certainly have sent me away empty-handed! But God saw how I was oppressed and how hard I worked, and he rebuked you last night."

They sent for him and Jeroboam and all Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam, saying, "Your father made us work too hard! Now if you lighten the demands he made and don't make us work as hard, we will serve you."

For you recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery: By working night and day so as not to impose a burden on any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God.

"People cry out because of the excess of oppression; they cry out for help because of the power of the mighty.

So they put foremen over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor. As a result they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.

But you must require of them the same quota of bricks that they were making before. Do not reduce it, for they are slackers. That is why they are crying, 'Let us go sacrifice to our God.' Make the work harder for the men so they will keep at it and pay no attention to lying words!"

Now a wife of one of the prophets appealed to Elisha for help, saying, "Your servant, my husband is dead. You know that your servant was a loyal follower of the Lord. Now the creditor is coming to take away my two boys to be his servants."

"Because of the violence done to the oppressed, because of the painful cries of the needy, I will spring into action," says the Lord. "I will provide the safety they so desperately desire."

Have mercy on me, for I am in distress! My eyes grow dim from suffering. I have lost my strength. For my life nears its end in pain; my years draw to a close as I groan. My strength fails me because of my sin, and my bones become brittle. Because of all my enemies, people disdain me; my neighbors are appalled by my suffering -- those who know me are horrified by my condition; those who see me in the street run away from me.read more.
I am forgotten, like a dead man no one thinks about; I am regarded as worthless, like a broken jar. For I hear what so many are saying, the terrifying news that comes from every direction. When they plot together against me, they figure out how they can take my life.

All of this is because the Lord who rules over all has said: 'Cut down the trees around Jerusalem and build up a siege ramp against its walls. This is the city which is to be punished. Nothing but oppression happens in it.

Make this announcement in the fortresses of Ashdod and in the fortresses in the land of Egypt. Say this: "Gather on the hills around Samaria! Observe the many acts of violence taking place within the city, the oppressive deeds occurring in it."

Look, the pay you have held back from the workers who mowed your fields cries out against you, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

So we worked on, with half holding spears, from dawn till dusk. At that time I instructed the people, "Let every man and his coworker spend the night in Jerusalem and let them be guards for us by night and workers by day. We did not change clothes -- not I, nor my relatives, nor my workers, nor the watchmen who were with me. Each had his weapon, even when getting a drink of water.

Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt for Israel's sake, and all the hardship that had come on them along the way, and how the Lord had delivered them.

The king then told Abiathar the priest, "Go back to your property in Anathoth. You deserve to die, but today I will not kill you because you did carry the ark of the sovereign Lord before my father David and you suffered with my father through all his difficult times."

Three of the thirty leaders went down to David at the rocky cliff at the cave of Adullam, while a Philistine force was camped in the Valley of Rephaim. David was in the stronghold at the time, while a Philistine garrison was in Bethlehem. David was thirsty and said, "How I wish someone would give me some water to drink from the cistern in Bethlehem near the city gate!"read more.
So the three elite warriors broke through the Philistine forces and drew some water from the cistern in Bethlehem near the city gate. They carried it back to David, but David refused to drink it. He poured it out as a drink offering to the Lord and said, "God forbid that I should do this! Should I drink the blood of these men who risked their lives?" Because they risked their lives to bring it to him, he refused to drink it. Such were the exploits of the three elite warriors.

When the fourteenth night had come, while we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected they were approaching some land. They took soundings and found the water was twenty fathoms deep; when they had sailed a little farther they took soundings again and found it was fifteen fathoms deep. Because they were afraid that we would run aground on the rocky coast, they threw out four anchors from the stern and wished for day to appear.read more.
Then when the sailors tried to escape from the ship and were lowering the ship's boat into the sea, pretending that they were going to put out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, "Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved." Then the soldiers cut the ropes of the ship's boat and let it drift away. As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, "Today is the fourteenth day you have been in suspense and have gone without food; you have eaten nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food, for this is important for your survival. For not one of you will lose a hair from his head." After he said this, Paul took bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all, broke it, and began to eat. So all of them were encouraged and took food themselves. (We were in all two hundred seventy-six persons on the ship.) When they had eaten enough to be satisfied, they lightened the ship by throwing the wheat into the sea. When day came, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could. So they slipped the anchors and left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the linkage that bound the steering oars together. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and steered toward the beach. But they encountered a patch of crosscurrents and ran the ship aground; the bow stuck fast and could not be moved, but the stern was being broken up by the force of the waves. Now the soldiers' plan was to kill the prisoners so that none of them would escape by swimming away. But the centurion, wanting to save Paul's life, prevented them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land, and the rest were to follow, some on planks and some on pieces of the ship. And in this way all were brought safely to land.

"Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from a flint rock and

But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, forcing us to do burdensome labor. So we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us and saw our humiliation, toil, and oppression.

A song of ascents. O Lord, for David's sake remember all his strenuous effort,

But as God's servants, we have commended ourselves in every way, with great endurance, in persecutions, in difficulties, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in riots, in troubles, in sleepless nights, in hunger,

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was rich, he became poor for your sakes, so that you by his poverty could become rich.

After they had proclaimed the good news in that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch. They strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, "We must enter the kingdom of God through many persecutions."

To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, poorly clothed, brutally treated, and without a roof over our heads. We do hard work, toiling with our own hands. When we are verbally abused, we respond with a blessing, when persecuted, we endure, when people lie about us, we answer in a friendly manner. We are the world's dirt and scum, even now.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, regarding the affliction that happened to us in the province of Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of living. Indeed we felt as if the sentence of death had been passed against us, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.

Are they servants of Christ? (I am talking like I am out of my mind!) I am even more so: with much greater labors, with far more imprisonments, with more severe beatings, facing death many times. Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with a rod. Once I received a stoning. Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea.read more.
I have been on journeys many times, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers from false brothers, in hard work and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, many times without food, in cold and without enough clothing. Apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxious concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not burn with indignation?

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content in any circumstance. I have experienced times of need and times of abundance. In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of contentment, whether I go satisfied or hungry, have plenty or nothing. I am able to do all things through the one who strengthens me.read more.
Nevertheless, you did well to share with me in my trouble.

Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

For in fact you shared the sufferings of those in prison, and you accepted the confiscation of your belongings with joy, because you knew that you certainly had a better and lasting possession.

They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth.

Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?

I am also aware that you have persisted steadfastly, endured much for the sake of my name, and have not grown weary.

Indeed we felt as if the sentence of death had been passed against us, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.

And you will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

You will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Happy is the one who endures testing, because when he has proven to be genuine, he will receive the crown of life that God promised to those who love him.

Think of how we regard as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job's endurance and you have seen the Lord's purpose, that the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

For this finds God's favor, if because of conscience toward God someone endures hardships in suffering unjustly.