“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits… who redeems your life from the pit.”

“This is the pits!”

I don’t know if that saying was universal or just in my locale during my younger days. It was a way of saying things were not good–not at all. To be honest, I was never sure if it was referring to pits that were. holes or pits in fruit that you bit into and hit if you weren’t careful. Everyone likes the flesh of the fruit–no one likes the pits. I suppose in California it could have referred to the La Brea Tar Pits, but I was still a midwestern boy at the time.

We all know those moments and seasons when it seems that life is all wrong and we are trapped in that circumstance with no way out. Maybe you are in such a moment now.

The Bible prefers to use the singular form, “pit,” but the meaning is the same–to be in a “pit” was never seen to be a good thing and often dangerous and deadly.

• Tar pits meant defeat for the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:10

• The place Joseph’s brothers put him before selling him to the Midianites was a pit (possibly a cistern for water), and he referred to the prison he was kept in later as a “pit” as well–see Genesis 37 and 40.

• Job uses the image of a pit as a place God casts him in judgment–Job 9:31; the image is used of judgment again in Job 33 and seems to be synonymous with final judgment there.

• The psalms use it to speak of the place where the dead go–not in a positive sense! See Psalm 28, 30, 40, 49, 55, 69, and 88 as examples. In a number of these it is “the pit of destruction.”

• Isaiah 38 uses the grave, death, and “the pit” synonymously.

• The same ideas carry through the rest of the Old Testament, and into the New, with a pit being a danger to people in various situations. Blind guides in Matthew lead their followers in falling into a pit.

• The last reference is in Revelation 20 to “the bottomless pit” where Satan is imprisoned during the Millennium.

So, when we come to the phrase “who redeems your life from the pit,” we recognize it isn’t just a bad circumstance, but a dreadful one that carries a dreadful end. While the ESV says “the pit,” other translations simply say “destruction”–and when you survey these verses using the “pit” imagery, you see why.

We face only a dreadful end when left to ourselves. But our gracious Lord “redeems” our lives from that terrible sentence of death. To “redeem” can mean a number of things, but its root meaning in scripture is that of paying a ransom or purchasing out of the market–in the case of people, the slave market–and setting them free.

Think of Joseph. Cast into a pit by his brothers in order for him to die without their shedding his blood, he was in utter despair. Later, in his presence, his brothers talk about how they ignored his pitiful cries from the pit. Similarly, that is where the Lord finds us trapped (even when we don’t recognize it) and destined to go. What an image of punishment–stuck in a big hole in the ground with no way out.

Our judgment is deserved, and yet the Lord chooses to pay the price to save us from that destruction–the price of his own life’s blood. Let these words from Paul in Ephesians remind us of this benefit that we must never forget: In (Jesus) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth (Ephesians 1:7-10).”

What a benefit indeed! What a redemption! What a Redeemer!