In the Bible, four significant sections deal with the mystery of suffering: the Prophecy of Jeremiah; the Book of Job; the chapters of the Prophecy of Isaiah which reflect on God's Suffering Servant, and the accounts of Jesus' Passion in the Gospels.

In the over-all teaching of the Bible, all these passages are inter-related and find their ultimate significance in the Gospel narratives of Jesus' passion. Hence, today we read a passage from Jeremiah, which provides some prophetic background to Jesus' confrontation with Jews who challenge him and his doctrine. The responsorial Psalm speaks of God as a "rock", and this image leads to the doctrine of the Resurrection.

Death is like a swamp into which we sink, apparently endlessly. A swamp has no bottom, but the spirituality of the Psalmists taught them to hope in God and to realise that, somehow, we would reach a rock-like point of security namely God himself who would be our salvation from death. This hope of the Psalmists received its doctrinal verification in the Resurrection of Jesus,