Bible Verses About Afflictions Made Beneficial

After these things, God tested Avraham. He said to him, "Avraham!" and he answered, "Here I am."

He said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Yitz'chak; and go to the land of Moriyah. There you are to offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will point out to you."

They said to each other, "We are in fact guilty concerning our brother. He was in distress and pleaded with us; we saw it and wouldn't listen. That's why this distress has come upon us now."

But don't be sad that you sold me into slavery here or angry at yourselves, because it was God who sent me ahead of you to preserve life.

God sent me ahead of you to ensure that you will have descendants on earth and to save your lives in a great deliverance.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God; and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household and ruler over the whole land of Egypt.

They arrived at Marah but couldn't drink the water there, because it was bitter. This is why they called it Marah [bitterness].

The people grumbled against Moshe and asked, "What are we to drink?"

Moshe cried to ADONAI; and ADONAI showed him a certain piece of wood, which, when he threw it into the water, made the water taste good. There ADONAI made laws and rules of life for them, and there he tested them.

The people came to Moshe and said, "We sinned by speaking against ADONAI and against you. Pray to ADONAI that he rid us of these snakes." Moshe prayed for the people,

In your distress, when all these things have come upon you, in the acharit-hayamim, you will return to ADONAI your God and listen to what he says;

for ADONAI your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your ancestors which he swore to them.

You are to remember everything of the way in which ADONAI led you these forty years in the desert, humbling and testing you in order to know what was in your heart - whether you would obey his mitzvot or not.

He humbled you, allowing you to become hungry, and then fed you with man, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, to make you understand that a person does not live on food alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of ADONAI.

Think deeply about it: ADONAI was disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his child.

who fed you in the desert with man, unknown to your ancestors; all the while humbling and testing you in order to do you good in the end -

The people of Isra'el cried out to ADONAI, because he had 900 iron chariots, and for twenty years he cruelly oppressed the people of Isra'el.

because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before ADONAI when you heard what I said against this place and its inhabitants - that they would become an object of astonishment and cursing - and have torn your clothes and cried before me, I have also heard you, says ADONAI.

If I shut up the sky, so that there is no rain; or if I order locusts to devour the land; or if I send an epidemic of sickness among my people;

then, if my people, who bear my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.

However, Hizkiyahu did not respond commensurately with the benefit done for him, because he had grown proud; thus he brought anger on himself and on Y'hudah and Yerushalayim as well.

But Hizkiyahu then humbled himself for his pride, both he and the people living in Yerushalayim, so that ADONAI's anger did not strike them during Hizkiyahu's lifetime.

Then, when he was in distress, he began to appease the anger of ADONAI, abjectly humbling himself before the God of his ancestors.

Remember, please, the word you gave through your servant Moshe, 'If you break faith, I will scatter you among the peoples;

but if you return to me, observe my mitzvot and obey them, then, even if your scattered ones are in the most distant part of heaven, nevertheless, I will collect them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen for bearing my name.'