Bible verses about loneliness: 16 passages for when you feel alone

Turn to me and be gracious, for I am lonely and afflicted.

Scripture uses the word lonely, and puts it in the mouth of a king. You are allowed to say it to God just as plainly.

I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I am like a lone bird on a housetop.

An owl in the ruins, a single bird on a rooftop, awake while everyone else sleeps. The heading calls this the prayer of someone afflicted and faint, and God kept it in the Bible.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

The letter quotes the promise Moses gave Israel (Deuteronomy 31:6) and applies it to ordinary contentment. The Greek stacks negatives: never, no never, will I leave you.

and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The last words of Matthew. The Gospel opened with a name for Jesus, Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), and it closes with the same promise.

So Hagar gave this name to the LORD who had spoken to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “Here I have seen the One who sees me!”

Hagar was a foreign servant who had fled into the desert, pregnant and alone. The angel of the LORD found her by a spring, and she gave God a name: the God who sees me.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you! Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.

Just before this, Zion says the Lord has forgotten her (Isaiah 49:14). God answers with the strongest human bond he can name, and then says even that is weaker than his.

Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

The heights, the depths, the far side of the sea. The psalm names the most remote places a person could end up and finds God already there.

The LORD your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.”

A prophet whose book is mostly warning ends with God singing over his people. Loneliness says no one delights in you. This verse says God does, out loud.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

The deepest human rejection imaginable is named here, and it is not the end of the sentence. God receives the person that others have let go.

At my first defense, no one stood with me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message would be fully proclaimed, and all the Gentiles would hear it. So I was delivered from the mouth of the lion.

Paul wrote this near the end of his life, in prison. Everyone deserted him at his trial, yet he asks that it not be held against them, because the Lord stood with him.

“Look, an hour is coming and has already come when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and you will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.

Jesus knew his friends would scatter that night and leave him alone. He named it plainly, and named what held him: the Father is with me.

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

On the cross Jesus prays the opening line of Psalm 22. He knows the feeling of abandonment at its deepest, and the psalm he quotes ends in trust and praise.

God settles the lonely in families; He leads the prisoners out to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.

The verse before calls God a father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). His care for the lonely often arrives as people: a family, a church, a friend.

Nevertheless, I have reserved seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”

Elijah told God twice that he was the only faithful one left (1 Kings 19:10, 14). God corrected him gently: there were seven thousand. Loneliness can make us feel more alone than we are.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to help him up!

A practical observation: two people can lift each other up. The Teacher had seen enough of life to know that going it alone is not strength.

And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds. Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Some had already made a habit of staying away. The writer does not scold so much as remind them why they need each other: to spur on and to encourage.