35+ Helpful Bible Verses for Fasting

Have you ever wondered about the significance of fasting in the Bible?

In the book of Esther, we find an epic tale of faith, courage, and yes, fasting. When Queen Esther discovered a plot to annihilate her people, the Jews, she didn't rush to confront the king. Instead, she asked for all the Jews in Susa to join her in a three-day fast. During this time, they sought God's wisdom, favor, and intervention. The act of denying physical needs to focus on spiritual matters profoundly shaped the narrative, leading to the deliverance of the Jewish people.

Fasting is an act of self-denial. When we go without food for a brief period of time we become more acutely aware of our hunger. When accompanied with prayer and meditation on scripture, fasting can help us to deny the desires of our flesh, and hunger after God.

During times of fasting we focus our attention on God, and on his promise to sustain our faith. Thus fasting is a demonstration of our humility and dependence on God. 

When Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness he resisted temptation by quoting the word of God. When we fast, we demonstrate our need for the spiritual sustenance that God provides.

In this article, we'll explore the theme of fasting in more detail, providing you with Bible verses that offer diverse perspectives on the spiritual practice of fasting.

The Purpose of Fasting

Matthew 6:16-18

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Psalm 69:10

When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.

Joel 2:12

Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning."

Acts 14:23

And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Fasting for Divine Guidance and Intervention

Esther 4:16

Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.

Ezra 8:23

So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.

2 Chronicles 20:3

Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.

Jesus on Fasting

Luke 5:33-35

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

Luke 4:2

For forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry.

Hunger for Jesus

Matthew 4:4

Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

John 6:35

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Zechariah 7:4-5

Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me, “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?”

Fasting and Intercessory Prayer

Psalms 35:13-14

Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting. When my prayers returned to me unanswered, I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.

Mark 9:25-29

And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”

Fasting and Repentance

Jonah 3:5

And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

Nehemiah 9:1

Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.

Daniel 9:3-5

So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.  I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed, “Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws.”

Fasting from Marital Intercourse to Focus on Prayer

1 Corinthians 7:5

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Fasting as a Metaphor for Sacrificial Love

Isaiah 58:3-7

“Why have we fasted,” they say, “and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” 

Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Examples of Fasting in the Bible

Moses

Exodus 34:27-28

And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Deuteronomy 19:18-19

Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also.

The Army of Israel

Judges 20:26

Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.

1 Samuel 31:11-13

But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and they came to Jabesh and burned them there. And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.

King David

2 Samuel 12:16

David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.

Psalm 69:9-10

For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.

Elijah 

1 Kings 19:8

And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

King Ahab

1 Kings 21:25-29

(There was never anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, urged on by Jezebel his wife. He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols, like the Amorites the LORD drove out before Israel.) When Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, “Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son.”

The Citizens of Jerusalem

Jeremiah 31:9 

In the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord. 

Ezra

Ezra 8:21

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.

Ezra 10:6

Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles.

Daniel and King Darius

Daniel 6:16-18

Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

Daniel 10:2-3

In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.

Anna, the Prophetess

Luke 2:36-37

And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 

Jesus

Matthew 4:1-2

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

The Apostle Paul (Saul)

Acts 9:4-9

And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Acts 14:23

Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.

The Church at Antioch

Acts 13:2-3

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

Conclusion

As we've seen, fasting is a significant practice in the Bible that spans from the Old Testament through to the New Testament. It's often associated with seeking God's guidance, demonstrating repentance, and expressing deep faith. Whether it's Queen Esther's brave fast for the deliverance of her people, the repentant fast of Nineveh, or the early church's fast for divine guidance, the act of fasting carries profound implications.

A Personal Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, as we reflect on these Bible verses about fasting, we ask for wisdom and understanding. Teach us to embrace fasting not as a ritual, but as a means of drawing closer to You. May it be a time of prayer, repentance, and seeking Your divine guidance. We pray that through fasting, our faith will deepen and our relationship with You will grow stronger. In Jesus' name, we pray, Amen.