I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:
Parallel translations
- WEB I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help,
- BSB I am counted among those descending to the Pit. I am like a man without strength.
- NKJV I am counted with those who go down to the pit; I am like a man who has no strength,
- NASB I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I have become like a man without strength,
- NLT I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
He feels counted among the dead, a man with no strength or help. His suffering leaves him utterly weak and helpless.
Overview
Heman sees himself as already numbered with those descending to the pit, devoid of strength. This sense of helplessness expresses the depth of his affliction. Such utter weakness foreshadows the helplessness Christ embraced in His suffering, that He might rescue the helpless.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Ps 28:1Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.
- 2 Cor 1:9But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:
- Ps 143:7Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.
- Ps 31:12I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.
- Job 17:1My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.
- Ps 30:9What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?
- Isa 38:17–18Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.
- Ps 109:22–24For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
- 2 Cor 13:4For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you.
- Ezek 26:20When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the living;
- Jonah 2:6I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.
- Rom 5:6For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 88:4 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.