Bible verses for grief — and the ones nobody reads at funerals

The comfort verses, said plainly, plus the part of the Bible that grieving people usually find more honest: the psalms of lament, which complain, accuse, and sometimes end in the dark without resolving.

You have probably already been handed the comfort verses. Someone said them at the service, or sent them in a message, and they were meant kindly. Some of them may have helped. Some of them may have landed like a door closing.

This page has both halves. First the passages that are quoted, with enough context that they are not just decoration. Then the ones that are almost never quoted — and those are the reason this page exists, because the Bible's own language for grief is far rougher and far less resolved than its reputation, and grieving people usually find that a relief rather than a shock.

Quoted throughout from the King James Version, which is in the public domain.

The ones people say to you

Psalm 34:18

"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit."

This one wears well, because of what it does not say. It does not say the broken heart is mended, or that it was for a reason, or that it will make sense later. It says only that God is near it — near the broken heart specifically, not near the person once they have recovered. If everything else feels premature, this one usually is not.

Psalm 23:4

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

The most-read psalm at funerals, and worth reading properly rather than as background music. Note that the psalm does not go around the valley. It goes through it, at walking pace, and the comfort offered inside it is company and a shepherd's stick — protection and steering — rather than rescue. It is a psalm about being accompanied through something, not about being spared it.

Revelation 21:4

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

This is a promise about the end of things, and it is worth being clear about that, because when it is offered in the first week it can sound like a request to stop crying now. It is not. The picture is of tears still on a face and someone bending down to wipe them, which assumes the weeping was real and went on for a long time.

John 11:35

"Jesus wept."

Two words, and the most useful verse on this page. In the story, Jesus is standing outside the tomb of a friend and he already knows what he is about to do — the raising is minutes away — and he cries anyway. Grief is not treated there as a failure of perspective. Knowing that it will be all right does not make the loss less of a loss, and the text does not pretend otherwise.

The ones nobody says to you

Roughly a third of the Psalms are laments, and they are the largest single category in the book. Almost none of them are read at funerals. They are not gentle. They complain, they accuse God directly, they ask how long this is going to go on, and they are in scripture without apology or correction.

If the comfort verses have been feeling thin, this is usually because you have been given only the tidy end of a book that contains both.

Psalm 13:1–2

"How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?"

Four "how longs" in two verses. This is not patient waiting; it is someone at the end of their patience, saying so to God's face, and the prayer is not rebuked for it. The psalm does turn towards trust by its last verse, but it takes the whole psalm to get there and it does not pretend the first two verses were a misunderstanding.

Psalm 88

"Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness."

That is the last line of the psalm. There is no turn. Psalm 88 begins in the dark, argues in the dark, and ends in the dark, and the final word in the Hebrew is essentially "darkness". It is the one psalm that does not resolve, and it is in the book anyway.

For a lot of people this is the single most important thing to know about the Bible and grief. There is a prayer in scripture for the night when nothing gets better and you cannot produce a hopeful ending, and it was kept, and it was sung. You are not required to arrive anywhere by the end of the day.

Lamentations 3

The famous lines are here: "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

What is almost always cut is what surrounds them. That chapter is deep inside a book of five poems about a destroyed city, and a few lines earlier the same speaker says his soul "is humbled in me" and that he remembers his affliction constantly. The hope in Lamentations 3 is not a summary of the book. It is one man talking himself into a sentence, in the middle of a catastrophe, and it is far more moving when you can see what it is surrounded by.

Ecclesiastes 3:4

"A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance."

Usually read as a soothing rhythm. It is more useful as permission: there is a time to mourn, it is a legitimate season with a place in the order of things, and you are not behind schedule for being in it.

Why the tidy verses can make it worse

Grief goes wrong in company for a specific reason: comfort is often offered in order to end the conversation. A verse produced quickly can function as a request to stop being sad in the room. Even a true verse does that if it arrives too fast.

The lament psalms do the opposite. They stay in it. They are long, they repeat themselves, they say the same complaint four different ways, which is exactly what grief does and exactly what people are usually too embarrassed to do out loud. Reading one is often the first time a grieving person finds their own tone of voice somewhere respectable.

Romans 12:15 is the instruction people forget when they are trying to help: "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." The second half has no advice in it at all.

How to actually read one of these

1. Pick a whole psalm rather than a verse. These do not work in fragments — the argument is the point, and a single line lifted out of Psalm 13 is either despair or reassurance depending on which line you took.
2. Read it out loud if you are alone. They were written to be said. Hearing your own voice make a complaint is different from thinking one.
3. Do not skip to the turn. If you go straight to the last verse of Psalm 13 you have read a greetings card. Sit in the four "how longs" first; that is where you probably are.
4. Let Psalm 88 be there without fixing it. If you read it and it does not resolve, it was not supposed to. Close the book and go to bed.
5. Come back to the same one. Grief is repetitive and so are these poems. Reading the same psalm every night for a month is not a lack of imagination; it is the correct use of the material.

If you are the one trying to comfort someone

• Sending one verse is usually better than sending five. Five reads as a search result.
• Do not send "everything happens for a reason". It is not in the Bible, and it is heard by most grieving people as an argument that the death was fine.
• Psalm 34:18 and John 11:35 are safe early. Revelation 21:4 usually is not, in the first weeks — it is a promise about the end of everything, and it can sound like a deadline for stopping crying.
• It is entirely acceptable to say you do not know what to say. That is closer to Job's friends at their best, when they sat with him on the ground for a week without speaking, than to anything they said afterwards.
• Come back in three months, when everybody else has stopped. That is when the verses start being needed.

What an app can and cannot do with this

Glow puts one verse on a screen and leaves space around it, and you move on when you want to. There is a quiet mood you can choose, and the whole Bible is in the app, which matters here more than anywhere else: the lament psalms have to be read whole, and a verse-a-day feed on its own would only ever show you their nicest lines.

It will not check on you, because it cannot send you anything — there is no notification of any kind in the app. It does not know that anything has happened to you, and it will never tell you that you have missed days. During the first months of grief that absence is the feature; software that starts nagging a bereaved person about consistency is doing real harm. What it can do is be there at four in the morning without asking anything of you, which is a small thing but is roughly the right size.

Frequently asked questions

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• What a daily Bible verse actually changes

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