As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
Parallel translations
- WEB Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
- KJV As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
- NKJV As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
- NASB Just as it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
- NLT (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)
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
Paul quotes Psalm 44 to show that God's people have long faced deadly suffering, even being regarded as sheep for slaughter. Hardship is the historic experience of the faithful, not a sign of rejection.
Overview
Citing Psalm 44:22, Paul grounds the sufferings of v. 35 in Scripture, showing that the righteous have always endured persecution. The quotation guards against the idea that affliction means God has abandoned his people. Instead, such suffering walks in the footsteps of the faithful before us, and supremely in the path of Christ, the true suffering servant, yet it cannot separate us from his love.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Ps 44:22Yet for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
- Isa 53:7He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.
- 1 Cor 15:30And why do we endanger ourselves every hour?
- 2 Cor 4:10–11We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
- 1 Cor 4:9For it seems to me that God has displayed us apostles at the end of the procession, like prisoners appointed for death. We have become a spectacle to the whole world, to angels as well as to men.
- Acts 8:32The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so He did not open His mouth.
- Acts 20:24But I consider my life of no value to me, if only I may finish my course and complete the ministry I have received from the Lord Jesus—the ministry of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
- Jer 11:19For I was like a gentle lamb led to slaughter; I did not know that they had plotted against me: “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be remembered no more.”
- Jer 12:3But You know me, O LORD; You see me and test my heart toward You. Drag away the wicked like sheep to the slaughter and set them apart for the day of carnage.
- John 16:2They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.
- Jer 51:40I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
- Ps 141:7As when one plows and breaks up the soil, so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of Sheol.
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Christ at the center
Paul unfolds the gospel in full: Christ our righteousness received by faith, the second Adam in whom many are made righteous, in whose death and resurrection we are buried and raised.
How Romans 8:36 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 Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.