As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
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.
- BSB As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
- 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 44:22Yes, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep for the slaughter.
- Isa 53:7He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.
- 1 Cor 15:30Why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour?
- 2 Cor 4:10–11always carrying in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
- 1 Cor 4:9For, I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men.
- Acts 8:32Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. As a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he doesn’t open his mouth.
- Acts 20:24But these things don’t count; nor do I hold my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to fully testify to the Good News of the grace of God.
- Jer 11:19But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter; and I didn’t know that they had devised devices against me, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.”
- Jer 12:3But you, Yahweh, know me; you see me, and try my heart toward you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter.
- John 16:2They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time comes that whoever kills you will think that he offers service to God.
- Jer 51:40“I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
- Ps 141:7“As when one plows and breaks up the earth, our bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol.”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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.