Psalm 34:18 is one sentence with two halves, and it survives being read on its own. Not every short verse does. Two of the ones most often sent are fragments of longer sentences, and in both cases the clause that gets dropped is the one doing the work.
Reading is harder than usual in early grief. Marie Curie says that “you may find your ability to concentrate and focus is reduced for a time”, and What’s Your Grief describes a mind “consumed by something painful, overwhelming, and life-changing”. Every passage below is short enough to finish, and each one is given whole.
Psalm 34:18. In the King James, if that is the one you grew up with:
Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit.
The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
The short version
Six passages
Each one is given whole. Five of the six are a single sentence, so there is nothing to trim and nothing lost by reading all of it.
Two are usually cut
John 14:27 and Revelation 21:4 are quoted in a shortened form that drops the part doing the work. Both are below, uncut.
Reading is hard right now
Marie Curie and What’s Your Grief both name reduced concentration as an ordinary part of early grief. Every passage here is short enough to finish in one go.
Sending one
If you are choosing a verse for somebody else, a line in your own voice should come above it. The passage on its own can read as a correction.
Five more, all of them whole
John 11:35. “Jesus wept.” The shortest verse in the Bible, and the surrounding lines are what make it worth having. Lazarus has been dead four days, his sister has said so, and the verse before this one says Jesus “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled”. Then two words. Then the people watching say, “See how much affection he had for him!” Nothing in it hurries anybody.
Matthew 5:4. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” One line of the Beatitudes, and a whole sentence on its own: a statement and its reason, with nothing left hanging off the end of it.
Psalm 147:3. “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” A single line of praise, sitting in a psalm about Jerusalem being rebuilt and its scattered people gathered in.
John 14:27, uncut:
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
John 14:27 was said hours before his arrest, to people about to lose everything.
Revelation 21:4, uncut:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away.
The two that get cut
Neither shortened version looks shortened, which is why both travel so easily.
John 14:27 is quoted almost everywhere as “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” and stopped there. What that drops is “not as the world gives”, which is the clause saying this is not the ordinary kind of peace where nothing is wrong. The short version promises calm. The whole sentence does not.
Revelation 21:4 is quoted as “He will wipe every tear from their eyes”. The rest of it is where death, mourning, crying and pain are named and ended, and then: “The first things have passed away.” The fragment sounds like a promise about this week. The passage is about something further off than that.
Google’s AI summary was showing both shortened forms on 9 September 2026, which is where a great many people now meet a verse for the first time.
That is why Psalm 34:18 is first here. It is short because the sentence is short, and not because anybody trimmed it to fit.
If you are choosing one for somebody else
People do this for three reasons, and the sources show all three: to send to a friend, to read at a funeral, and to put on a stone. On Reddit's r/AskFuneralDirectors somebody who had offered to read at a funeral was told to look for “a short passage, maybe a few lines of a letter from Paul or a psalm”. On r/Bible: “My father recently died & we were thinking of putting a short Bible verse on his tombstone.”
It is worth hearing how this can land from the other side. Somebody replying in a Reddit thread about comforting verses wrote: “I hate being ‘Bible versed’ after a loss, like I’m supposed to be instantly happy. just say ‘I’m so sorry’, give a hug, and weep with them.” (r/TrueChristian)
A passage arriving on its own can read as a correction, however it was meant. Underneath a line in your own voice, it reads as company instead.
Where to go next
Every passage above is short enough to keep. Psalm 34:18 in its setting shows the verses on either side of it.
The grief page covers the wider ground, and there is a longer piece on verses for the loss of a parent if that is the one.
If none of these is the one, Bible Nudge will take a sentence in your own words and find the closest. Find a passage.
If grief has turned into not wanting to be here, that is worth telling somebody tonight. In the United States the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is 988, by call or text. Outside the US, Find A Helpline lists services by country.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Beatitudes. The nine lines beginning “Blessed are” that open the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:4 is the second of them, which is why it reads as one of a series rather than as advice to one person.