What does the Bible say about cremation?

Top passages, ranked by readers

Rankings: OpenBible.info Topical Bible (CC BY) · Scripture: World English Bible

• Genesis 3:19

  By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

• 1 Samuel 31:12

  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 burnt them there.

• 1 Corinthians 13:3

  If I dole out all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don't have love, it profits me nothing.

• Joshua 7:25

  Joshua said, Why have you troubled us? Yahweh shall trouble you this day. All Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire, and stoned them with stones.

• Amos 2:1

  Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of Moab, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime;

• 2 Corinthians 5:1-5

  [1] For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. [2] For most assuredly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven; [3] if so be that being clothed we will not be found naked. [4] For indeed we who are in this tent do groan, being burdened; not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. [5] Now he who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the down payment of the Spirit.

• Philippians 3:21

  who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.

• Romans 8:38-39

  [38] For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, [39] nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

• 2 Kings 23:17-24

  [17] Then he said, What monument is that which I see? The men of the city told him, It is the tomb of the man of God, who came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel. [18] He said, Let him be; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. [19] All the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke [Yahweh] to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel. [20] He killed all the priests of the high places that were there, on the altars, and burned men's bones on them; and he returned to Jerusalem. [21] The king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the Passover to Yahweh your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. [22] Surely there was not kept such a Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah; [23] but in the eighteenth year of king Josiah was this Passover kept to Yahweh in Jerusalem. [24] Moreover those who had familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the teraphim, and the idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh.

• 2 Chronicles 16:13-14

  [13] Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign. [14] They buried him in his own tombs, which he had hewn out for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled with sweet odors and various kinds [of spices] prepared by the perfumers' are: and they made a very great burning for him.

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• being cremation