18 Bible Verses about Hatred Between Relatives

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”

When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.

You sit, maligning your brother,
slandering your mother’s son.

Even your brothers—your own father’s household—
even they were treacherous to you;
even they have cried out loudly after you.
Do not have confidence in them,
though they speak well of you.

The Lord says:

I will not relent from punishing Edom
for three crimes, even four,
because he pursued his brother with the sword.
He stifled his compassion,
his anger tore at them continually,
and he harbored his rage incessantly.

The Lord says:

I will not relent from punishing Tyre
for three crimes, even four,
because they handed over
a whole community of exiles to Edom
and broke a treaty of brotherhood.

You will even be betrayed by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends. They will kill some of you.

“If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’—which neither you nor your fathers have known, any of the gods of the peoples around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other— you must not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity, and do not spare him or shield him. read more.
Instead, you must kill him. Your hand is to be the first against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will even rise up against their parents and have them put to death.

Then brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise up against parents and put them to death.

Surely a son considers his father a fool,
a daughter opposes her mother,
and a daughter-in-law is against her mother-in-law;
a man’s enemies are the men of his own household.

and a man’s enemies will be
the members of his household.

“This is what the Lord says, ‘I am going to bring disaster on you from your own family: I will take your wives and give them to another before your very eyes, and he will sleep with them publicly.

All the brothers of a poor man hate him;
how much more do his friends
keep their distance from him!
He may pursue them with words,
but they are not there.

An offended brother is harder to reach
than a fortified city,
and quarrels are like the bars of a fortress.

Then Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his household.”

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be My disciple.

a lying witness who gives false testimony,
and one who stirs up trouble among brothers.