---
title: "Psalm 143:3-4 | Bible Nudge"
description: "Read Psalm 143:3-4 in the World English Bible, with what surrounds the passage and a question to sit with."
url: "https://biblenudge.com/context/psalm-143-3-4"
lang: "en"
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  es: "https://biblenudge.com/es/contexto/salmo-143-3-4.md"
---

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# Psalm 143:3-4

World English Bible

For the enemy pursues my soul. He has struck my life down to the ground. He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead. Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate.

## What surrounds this passage

Psalm 143 is a prayer written under pursuit and pressure. These two verses describe what it has done to the speaker, and the psalm continues asking rather than concluding.

The verses on either side

Psalm 143:1-7, World English Bible

1.  Hear my prayer, Yahweh. Listen to my petitions. In your faithfulness and righteousness, relieve me.
2.  Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
3.  For the enemy pursues my soul. He has struck my life down to the ground. He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead.
4.  Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate.
5.  I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your doings. I contemplate the work of your hands.
6.  I spread out my hands to you. My soul thirsts for you, like a parched land. Selah.
7.  Hurry to answer me, Yahweh. My spirit fails. Don’t hide your face from me, so that I don’t become like those who go down into the pit.

A question to sit with

What has been taking everything you have?

Why this one, and not these

3 passages were considered for this and turned down, each for a reason written at the time.

Psalm 6:6-7

A powerful description of weariness and weeping, but its imagery is tied to grief and adversaries, and using it here would blur the boundary with the reviewed grief record.

Isaiah 40:31

A promise of renewed strength, which answers a state the reader is not yet in.

Matthew 11:28-30

The reviewed anxiety passage. Reusing it across records removes the distinction the records exist to hold.

Written about this passage

- [Bible Verses for Being Tired: When Your Body, Your Mind or Your Faith Is Worn Out](https://biblenudge.com/blog/bible-verses-for-being-tired)

    Worn out in body, mind or faith? Psalm 143:3-4 to read tonight, Jesus tired at the well, Elijah asleep under the tree, and when tiredness needs a doctor.

- [Bible Verses for Mental Exhaustion: When the Words Are Already There](https://biblenudge.com/blog/bible-verses-for-mental-exhaustion)

    Psalm 143 says overwhelmed and desolate in a prayer, and does not hurry past either word. The passage, the verses around it, and when to see a doctor.

- [Psalms for Anxiety: Psalms 56, 63 and 143 Read Whole, and How People Have Prayed Them](https://biblenudge.com/blog/psalms-for-anxiety)

    Three whole psalms to read aloud when anxious: Psalm 56 for fear, Psalm 63 for the hours awake, Psalm 143 for being worn down.

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