Psalms 40:2

And brought me up out of a pit of destruction, out of the miry slough:

And set my feet upon a rock, made firm my steps.

A literal reference to Jeremiah's imprisonment in the dungeon can hardly be intended. The second line, set… rock, makes it plain that the whole verse is to be understood figuratively. He compares his plight to that of a prisoner in a dungeon (Lamentations 3:53; Lamentations 3:55), or even a dead man in the grave (Psalms 28:1; Psalms 88:4; Psalms 88:6); to that of a traveller floundering in a morass, or quicksand. Quagmires, -treacherous to the last degree," are common in Palestine. Thomson's Land and the Book, p. 360. Now he has been given firm footing (Psalms 27:5), and the possibility of secure advance (Psalms 17:5; Psalms 37:31).