I’ve said it before and I’ll definitely say it again, the Bible is one heck of an emo book. The Psalms are riddled with emo verses that would make Panic! At the Disco sweat. And John’s Gospel is one emo adventure after another (check out this substack for a breakdown). But did you know entire BOOKS of the Bible are emo, too? Here are the 10 most emo books of the Bible from “my jeans are a little tight” to “Gerard Way’s eyeliner is running down my cheeks”.
10. 2 Samuel (especially chapters 18-19 about David & Absalom)
Absalom was in open rebellion against his father David and David had to strike him down. This is double the tragedy, double the gut-wrenching. David openly weeps (as he is wont to do), “O my son Absalom!” Like how much more emo can you get! David’s grief is so intense that it nearly destroyed the army’s morale after their victory. The whole thing was a parent’s worst nightmare realized.
9. Ruth
You thought women were just emotional but not emo? Must I remind you of the greats? The book of Ruth opens with famine, the death of Naomi’s husband and both sons, and three destitute widows. Emo royalty! Naomi is so stinking bitter that changes her name to Mara, that means “bitter”, and proclaims that God has made her life empty. Give the lady a studded belt and some black eyeliner! But in those ancient times, the grief of childlessness and the loss of security made widowhood a form of social death. The book of Ruth might as well be a Hawthorn Heights song, you know the one.
8. Habakkuk
“How long, O Lord?” That’s how Habkkuk opens his book. And says over and over and over again throughout. The whole book is Habakkuk arguing with God about why evil prospers and the righteous suffer. It’s just one long complaint about God’s apparent inaction. This is every emo frontman who has ever sung about the girl of his dreams not noticing him.
7. Gospel of John
John is the most emo of the Gospel writers, focusing heavily on theme of light vs. darkness, rejection by your own people, and betrayal by close friends (Brand New and Taking Back Sunday have some words put to music about this). John’s Gospel is so visceral and full. The Passion narrative includes Jesus weeping, sweating blood, and feeling totally abandoned by God on the cross. And don’t leave out the farewell discourse in chapters 14-17! This is where Jesus prepares his friends for his death with foreshadowing so heavy Urban Decay called to get rights for the shade.
6. Hosea
I wasn’t originally going to include Hosea because he can so often be used by toxic masculinity to reinforce purity culture and other bad standards of patriarchy and using women, however…The story of Hosea is actually one of broken covenant love; God describes feeling cuckolded, abandoned, and grieving over unfaithful Israel. Hosea’s emo over having to continually take back his prostitute wife betrayal after betrayal, but God is really showing His emo side and how He feels about loving Israel, His people so much and them just not loving Him back the same way. The intimate language of broken covenant love used makes God’s pain relational and deeply vulnerable. I’m certain this is where Dashboard Confessional got his inspiration.
5. Jeremiah
Jeremiah isn’t called “the weeping prophet” for nothing! People like to remember his cute passages like, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” but totally forget ones like, “May the day my mother gave me birth never be blessed!” Dude was intense. Of course, he was. He spent over 40 years watching his warnings be ignored and his nation collapse. Jeremiah is beaten, imprisoned, thrown in a cistern, and forced to watch everything he prophesied come true while being hated for it. You’d rue the day you were born, too! I feel like The Used probably took a couple cues from Jeremiah.
4. Ecclesiastes
So Ecclesiastes isn’t acutely grieving, it’s more emotionally exhausted and disillusioned. You’d be too if you’d tried everything– wisdom, pleasure, work, wealth– and found it all empty, too. Real “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot” energy, or lack of it, if you will. The pervasive refrain throughout is “meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless”. Existential despair at its deepest! We’re getting into the real sludge of emo now.
3. Psalms (specifically the Lament Psalms)
65 out of 150 psalms consist of cries of abandonment, betrayal, enemies, illness, and spiritual darkness. That’s almost half the book! King David is the model emo boy. His raw emotional honesty includes anger at God and accusations that He’s sleeping for forgotten him. That’s truly being in touch with the dark parts of yourself and letting them out. That’s emo. That’s writing through the wound and not taking no for an answer. The repetition across dozens of psalms shows that David wasn’t having just one bad day– he’s showcasing the human condition of recurring suffering and how that’s actually okay. It’s okay to not be okay and to shout that out and to give it to God, especially when it feels like He isn’t listening. Faith from the wound. That’s emo catholic theology.
2. Job
I’m sure you could guess that Job would be near the top of this list. How emo is it for the literal devil to be like, “Let me have a swipe at this guy,” and God going, “Give him your worst. You won’t win.” Insane levels of punk and emo incoming! So, it opens with the loss of all ten of Job’s children, all of his wealth, and his physical health in rapid succession with no explanation. The next 35 or so chapters are Job arguing that he’s a good guy with his friends saying he must’ve done something wrong while he sits in ashes, scrapes his sores, and wishes he’d never been born. The existential crisis Job faces in this tale runs so much deeper than the circumstantial pain he suffers. Job questions, and forces us to question, whether God is even just or good. And we just sit with that (not just on prom night, Straylight Run!).
1. Lamentations
The definition of “lamentation” is passionate expression of grief or sorrow, like weeping, which could very well explain emo culture in one word. So, of course, the Book of Lamentations made number one on my list. This book is literally structured as funeral dirges over Jerusalem’s destruction, including graphic imagery of starvation, cannibalism, and devastation. Jeremiah wrote it as an eyewitness account, which gives it a nice raw, unfiltered emotional immediacy. Lamentations is often called “the saddest book in existence” because entire chapters are devoted to expressing inconsolable grief. I was trying to find an emo band to compare to this book and really, no one holds a candle to just the raw, outrageous, sorrow of Lamentations. Brand New sometimes gets close, maybe Hawthorn Heights or Underoath, but no one really takes the cake like this book does. Saddest book in existence indeed.
The next time you want to cry into your Cheerios and question whether or not God listens to posers like you, have a gander at one of these 10 books of the Bible. Then remember that these guys all got through it and you will, too. Someday.