Bible Strands
Psalms 69:8
I have become a stranger to my brothers and a foreigner to my mother’s sons,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God while describing his sudden isolation from his immediate family during a period of public scorn and zealous devotion to God's house.
The words — מוּזָר (mu.zor) means "estranged" and נָכְרִי (na.kheri) means "foreigner," using legal-kinship terminology to mark the speaker's forced removal from his own household.
The thread — This pattern of familial rejection is recorded in Psalm 31:11, where acquaintances flee, and is later applied to Jesus in John 1:11 and John 7:5, where His own brothers do not believe in Him.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that covenant faithfulness can produce documented social and familial alienation, requiring the reader to treat the isolation as a factual consequence rather than a spiritual deficiency.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children.
Cross-references
- Psalms 31:11 Among all my enemies I am a disgrace, and among my neighbors even more. I am dreaded by my friends—they flee when they see me on the street.
- John 1:11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
- John 7:5 For even His own brothers did not believe in Him.
- Psalms 38:11 My beloved and friends shun my disease, and my kinsmen stand at a distance.
- Micah 7:5 Do not rely on a friend; do not trust in a companion. Seal the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms.
- Matthew 10:35 For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
- Matthew 26:70 But he denied it before them all: “I do not know what you are talking about.”
- 1 Samuel 17:28 Now when David’s oldest brother Eliab heard him speaking to the men, his anger burned against David. “Why have you come down here?” he asked. “And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and wickedness of heart—you have come down to see the battle!”
- Job 19:13 He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.
- Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.