Pits are places into which people were cast under King Heth’s commandment. People who did not believe the prophets “cast into pits and left them to perish” some of the prophets (Ether 9:29).
Men cast the three disciples “down into the earth,” but they were delivered “out of the depths of the earth.” Those who opposed them “could not dig pits sufficient to hold them” (3 Nephi 28:20).