Loneliness

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Before anything has gone wrong, the first thing called not good is a person on his own. The verse treats the need for company as part of how people are made, not as a weakness in whoever is feeling it.

And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

Elijah tells God twice that he alone is left of the prophets and that his life is being hunted. The count turns out to be wrong, seven thousand others are named later, but the isolation he describes is the state he is actually living in.

Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.

A short request from a man who calls himself desolate and afflicted. He does not list what happened and does not describe an outcome. He asks to be turned toward and looked at, and for his pain to be seen.

I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

A single line: he looks to his right hand and finds nobody who would know him, refuge failed, no man cared for his soul. It names the particular loneliness of being in trouble and having no one notice.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Practical rather than sentimental. Two are better than one because one can lift the other up, because two lying down keep warm, because two can withstand an attacker. The writer's worry is the person who falls with nobody there.

I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation.

Jeremiah says he did not sit among the people making merry, that he sat alone, and he lays that isolation at God's own door. The loneliness here came out of the work he was given rather than any failure of his.

And they all forsook him, and fled.

Five words for the moment of the arrest: they all forsook him and fled. The gospel does not soften it, and every person in the sentence had promised hours earlier that they would not.

At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

Paul describes a hearing at which no one appeared for him and everyone deserted him. He asks that it not be charged against them, then says the Lord stood with him. The absence of his friends is still recorded plainly as fact.