Psalms 18:4
The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of chaos overwhelmed me.
BSB
ASV
The cords of death compassed me, And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid.
KJV
The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
"They surrounded me." Here the necessity of deliverance is set forth. And first he shows the magnitude of deliverance. Second, the prayer he pours forth to God in tribulation. Third, he sets forth the hearing of his prayer, "he heard." Note that these three -- …
"The sorrows of death compassed me." Death like a cruel conqueror seemed to twist round about him the cords of pain. He was environed and hemmed in with threatening deaths of the most appalling sort. He was like a mariner broken by the storm and driven upon the rocks by dreadful breakers, white as the teeth of death. Sad plight for the man after God's own heart, but thus it is that Jehovah dealeth with his sons. "The floods of ungodly men made me afraid."
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 22:16For dogs surround me; a band of evil men encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet.
leads to
And, as another Scripture says: “They will look on the One they have pierced.”
Then I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and prayer, and they will look on Me, the One they have pierced. They…
When they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments by casting lots.
So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands, and put my finger where the nails have been, and put…
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided His garments into four parts, one for each soldier, with the tunic remaining. It was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
Through
2 Corinthians 1:9Indeed, we felt we were under the sentence of death, in order that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.
leads to
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God.
Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.
Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and in a sense, he did receive Isaac back from death.