Bible verses for the loss of a parent

Gathered

Genesis has a sentence it says when a father dies. Abraham was gathered to his people; so was Isaac, in almost the same words; so was Jacob. The verb is asaph (Strong’s 622), to gather or take in, and Jacob’s death uses it twice in one verse:

When Jacob finished charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, breathed his last breath, and was gathered to his people.Genesis 49:33 · World English Bible

He gathered up his feet into the bed, and then he was gathered to his people: the same verb, first with Jacob doing it and then with it done to him (interlinear). So the phrase is not a polite word for burial. Jacob is gathered in Egypt, in his bed, and is not buried until the next chapter, after the embalming and the long procession back to Canaan, which our funeral readings follow step by step. Alexander MacLaren noticed the same thing in Abraham’s verse, where dying, being gathered and being buried are three separate statements, and called it “a dim intimation of something beyond this present life” (commentaries on Genesis 25:8). The text itself does not spell out what being gathered is.

Now Psalm 27:10, at the top of the list: then the LORD will take me up. In Hebrew take me up is the same verb, ya’asfeni, he will gather me in (interlinear). Most commentators read the psalm as being abandoned rather than bereaved, and Matthew Poole and Joseph Benson both list a parent’s death among its possible meanings (commentaries on Psalm 27:10). We are not claiming the psalm was written at a graveside. We are pointing at the verb: the parent is gathered to their people, and the one left behind is told who will gather them. The same verse, for a parent who left in a different way, is on our page about betrayal.

Two pairs of brothers at one grave

Abraham is buried by Isaac and Ishmael, his sons. Isaac is buried by Esau and Jacob, his sons. Ishmael had been sent away with his mother soon after Isaac was weaned (Genesis 21:8-14), and Jacob had fled from a brother who meant to kill him (Genesis 27:41-43); the two met again in Genesis 33 and went separate ways. Neither burial says how it went. Ellicott assumes Isaac and Ishmael “met as friends at their father’s burial”, “their enmity long over” (commentaries on Genesis 25:9), but the text only sets their two names side by side at the grave. If a funeral is about to put you in a room with family you have not spoken to, Genesis has been there twice, and it does not tell you what to feel about it.

After his mother

Genesis 24:67 ends So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death, and both our translations say death. The Hebrew does not. It says ’acharei immo, after his mother, and stops (interlinear). The translators supplied the word, rightly; nobody doubts what is meant, so this is a translation choice, not a question about the text. But the sentence as written is plainer than ours, and anyone who has lost a mother knows what “after his mother” means.

Genesis also gives the numbers to work out how long “after” was. Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred (21:5) and Sarah about ninety (17:17); she died at a hundred and twenty-seven (23:1); Isaac married at forty (25:20). That is about three years, the figure Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole and John Gill all give (commentaries on Genesis 24:67). And the comfort comes straight after He loved her, which is only the second time the verb ’ahav, to love, appears in the Bible (Strong’s 157). The first is Genesis 22:2, where Isaac is the son whom you love. The boy his father loved loses his mother, marries, and loves. Our wedding readings pick the same verse up from the other end.

A father’s last words, said again

Jacob, dying, says to Joseph: Behold, I am dying, but God will be with you. At the end of the book, Joseph says it to his own brothers:

Joseph said to his brothers, “I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”Genesis 50:24 · World English Bible

In Hebrew both sentences begin with the same two words, anokhi met, I am dying (48:21, 50:24). The son says to his brothers, at his own death, what his father said to him at his. Genesis does not comment on it. It just lets a father’s words turn up again a generation later, which is something families know about.

By the grave of my father and my mother

In 2 Samuel 19, Barzillai turns down a place at King David’s court and asks for one thing instead: to go home and die by the grave of my father and my mother. It is on the list above. Plenty of people make the same request, and Scripture records it without a word of correction.

Grief is not forbidden

1 Thessalonians 4:13 is sometimes quoted as if it said don’t grieve. It says don’t grieve like the rest, who have no hope, and the King James makes the comparison plainer still: that ye sorrow not, even as others. Matthew Henry: “Grief for the death of friends is lawful.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown: “Not all natural mourning for dead friends is forbidden” (commentaries on 1 Thessalonians 4:13). Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus; that verse has its own page.

When it is more than grief

MedlinePlus, from the US National Library of Medicine: “When you grieve, it's part of the normal process of reacting to a loss” (bereavement). The American Psychiatric Association adds that “For most people, grief-related symptoms following the death of a close other decrease over time”, and that prolonged grief disorder is only diagnosed in an adult when the loss was at least a year ago and the grief is still intense and disabling (prolonged grief disorder). If it has been longer than that and nothing has eased, tell a doctor. If you are thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 in the US (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).

What this page is not

• It is not a page of funeral readings. If you are choosing what to read at the service, our funeral readings give each passage with a read-aloud time, and carry Jacob’s funeral and the seven days of mourning in Genesis 50:10.
• It does not tell you where your parent is now. That is a question for your own tradition, and nothing on this page depends on the answer.
• It does not grade grief. The three years in Genesis 24 are a description, not a schedule.
• For other losses, our grief page is broader, and what to say to someone grieving is for the people around you. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day readings may be hard to read for a while, and are there when they are not.