Bible Strands
Romans 8:36
As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Paul writes to the Roman church in the rhetorical climax of Romans 8:31–39, immediately after listing every possible threat to the believer's security (8:35) and now answering with a quotation. He speaks as part of the collective "we," not as a detached observer.
The words — θανατοῦμεθα (thanatoumetha) is a present deponent: "we are being put to death," an ongoing state, not a single event. ἕνεκεν (heneken) is a strong causal preposition, "on account of," giving the suffering a deliberate purpose rather than mere coincidence.
The thread — The verse quotes Psalm 44:22 directly; the "sheep to be slaughtered" image echoes Isaiah 53:7, and Paul's own "we endanger ourselves every hour" in 1 Corinthians 15:30 is the same claim in his own voice.
Why it lands — It reclassifies suffering from evidence of abandonment to evidence of identification: the "for your sake" (ἕνεκεν σοῦ) means the pain is not random but purposeful. The reader is asked to stop reading their own pain as God's absence.
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 Greek words
King James Version
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Cross-references
- Psalms 44:22 Yet for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
- Isaiah 53:7 He 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 Corinthians 15:30 And why do we endanger ourselves every hour?
- Acts 8:32 The 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.
- 1 Corinthians 4:9 For 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.
- 2 Corinthians 4:10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
- Acts 20:24 But 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.
- Jeremiah 11:19 For 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.”
- John 16:2 They 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.
- Jeremiah 12:3 But 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.