Bible verses about bitterness

Bitter of soul

She was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly.1 Samuel 1:10 · World English Bible

“Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.Job 7:11 · World English Bible

“My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.Job 10:1 · World English Bible

Three passages, one Hebrew phrase: mar nefesh, bitter of soul, said of Hannah at the shrine and by Job twice. Both our translations keep it as bitterness of soul, so you can see it repeat. Hannah is praying, and the priest watching her lips move decides she is drunk (1 Samuel 1:13-14). Job is complaining, and says so in as many words. God answers him at length, out of the whirlwind, and at the end of the book it is the three friends, not Job, who are told they have not spoken rightly:

It was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.Job 42:7 · World English Bible

The heart knows its own bitterness and joy; he will not share these with a stranger.Proverbs 14:10 · World English Bible

The proverb has the noun, morrah (4787) — literally the bitterness of its own soul — and it says the thing people in the middle of it usually feel: that nobody else can see all of it.

“Call me Mara”

She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”Ruth 1:20-21 · World English Bible

Mara means bitter, and it is a name that occurs once in the Bible: here, in her own sentence. Nobody takes her up on it. Two verses later the narrator writes So Naomi returned, and after she asks to be renamed, “Naomi” appears fifteen more times in the book, in both our translations — counted in our own text. Nor does anything in the book rebuke her for saying it.

She has said it once already. At Ruth 1:13 both translations have her telling her daughters-in-law that it grieves me; the Hebrew there is the same verb, marar (4843), with the same exceedingly that closes verse 20. This is one of the places the two translations cannot show you, because both chose grieves.

The bitter water

When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink from the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore its name was called Marah. The people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” Then he cried to the LORD. The LORD showed him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. There he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them.Exodus 15:23-25 · World English Bible

Marah is the same word — the feminine of mar, bitter — pronounced like Naomi’s Mara and spelled with a different last letter. It is the first place Israel stops after the Red Sea, three days without water (Exodus 15:22). The people complained, Moses cried out to the LORD, and the answer was a tree thrown into the water.

Where the “root of bitterness” comes from

looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and many be defiled by it,Hebrews 12:15 · World English Bible

lest there should be amongst you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be amongst you a root that produces bitter poison;Deuteronomy 29:18 · World English Bible

Hebrews is borrowing. Eleven of the fourteen commentaries on the verse at Bible Hub name the source: Deuteronomy 29:18. Read Deuteronomy’s sentence from the start and the root is a person — a man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away to serve other gods. The Expositor’s Greek Testament reads Hebrews the same way: the bitter root “was one of their own members”, and the next verse in Hebrews names Esau. Benson reads it first as a person and then widens it to any evil disposition that spreads through a community. So a phrase now mostly used for a feeling inside one person is, in both of its sources, about what one person’s turning does to many.

There is also a small puzzle in the Greek. Hebrews follows the Greek translation of Deuteronomy, and two of its oldest manuscripts disagree at exactly this word. Codex Vaticanus reads en cholē, “in gall”. Codex Alexandrinus reads enochlē, “should trouble”, which is what Hebrews has. They are the same six letters with two of them swapped — ΕΝΧΟΛΗ and ΕΝΟΧΛΗ. Bengel pointed it out in his Gnomon; the Cambridge Bible notes that the writer habitually follows the Alexandrian text; Meyer’s commentary names Hallet, Wolf, Delitzsch and Hofmann as holding that the Alexandrian copy was altered to match Hebrews, and disagrees. We do not settle it. Either way, the trouble you in both our translations stands where one copy of Deuteronomy has gall.

Gall and wormwood

Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness. My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope. It is because of The LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail.Lamentations 3:19-22 · World English Bible

Open the King James on Deuteronomy 29:18 above: a root that beareth gall and wormwood. Now Lamentations 3:19: the wormwood and the gall. They are the same two Hebrew words, rosh and la’anah, in reverse order. The modern rendering does not let you see it — bitter poison in one place, the wormwood and the bitterness in the other — so for once the older translation is the one to read.

What the lament does with the pair is worth reading slowly. It does not deny them: my soul still remembers them. It turns on one sentence — This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope — and what it recalls is the LORD’s loving kindness. Verses 22 and 23 are also on our page on regret.

For I see that you are in the poison of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.”Acts 8:23 · World English Bible

The King James says gall a third time here, where the modern rendering says poison. The Expositor’s Greek Testament notes that the Greek word, cholē, is the one the Septuagint uses for rosh in both Deuteronomy 29:18 and Lamentations 3:19 (commentaries on Acts 8:23).

Put away

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you.Ephesians 4:31-32 · World English Bible

Bitterness heads the list, and the list is followed at once by what goes in its place: kind, tender hearted, forgiving. The Greek noun, pikria (4088), occurs four times in the New Testament — Acts 8:23, Romans 3:14, Ephesians 4:31 and Hebrews 12:15 — and three of the four are on this page. The passage is also on our page about forgiveness, which says plainly that forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing.

Husbands, love your wives, and don’t be bitter against them.Colossians 3:19 · World English Bible

The one instruction aimed at a single relationship. Its verb, pikrainō (4087), occurs four times in the New Testament, and the other three are in Revelation.

What this page is not

It is a set of passages with their context, not counsel. It keeps two things apart because the texts do: bitterness said out loud, to God, by Hannah and Job and Naomi, and the root that Deuteronomy and Hebrews warn will spread. Nothing here can tell you which one you are carrying. If what sits under it is a betrayal or an old anger, our pages on betrayal, anger and forgiveness go further.