Hope, results of its absence

An absence of hope leads to a loss of vision, a sense of despondency and ultimately to despair. This contrasts sharply with the Christian hope.

Feelings produced by a lack of hope

Despair

Job 17:13–15; Proverbs 13:12; 1 Chronicles 29:15 See also Job 6:11, Job 7:6; Psalm 88:15–18; Ecclesiastes 2:17; Isaiah 19:9, Isaiah 38:18; 2 Corinthians 1:8

If I look for Sheol as my home, if I spread out my bed in darkness, and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me?

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

For we are foreigners and strangers in Your presence, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

A sense of being abandoned by God

Psalm 22:1–2 See also Lamentations 3:18; Ezekiel 37:11

For the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Doe of the Dawn.” A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning? I cry out by day, O my God, but You do not answer, and by night, but I have no rest.

A deep longing for life to end

1 Kings 19:4; Job 3:20–21; Ecclesiastes 4:1–2 See also Genesis 27:46; Numbers 11:15; Job 7:13–15; Jeremiah 8:3; Jonah 4:3, Jonah 4:8; Revelation 9:6

while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”

Why is light given to the miserable, and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death that does not come, and search for it like hidden treasure,

Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter. So I admired the dead, who had already died, above the living, who are still alive.

The outcome of a lack of hope

The choice of trusting in God or futile self-effort

Romans 4:18 See also Jonah 1:13–14; Jeremiah 18:11–12; Acts 27:20

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”

Suicide

Matthew 27:5 See also 1 Samuel 31:4; 2 Samuel 17:23; 1 Kings 16:18

So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.