Inglês com a Bíblia: o que significa "plea" e a expressão "cop a plea"?

One of these days, while I was skimming through the Bible, I stumbled upon a very beautiful verse from Psalms. Here's Psalms 55:1

Listen to my prayer, O God,

do not ignore my plea;

hear me and answer.

If you're like me, you may be wondering what plea means. When you make a plea, you make a very earnest request, a desperate appeal. And that's what David was doing in his prayer to God in Psalms 50:1. But now that we've all learned a new word, what should we do with it besides memorizing it?

I always think it's a great idea to look for expressions or collocations with a recently learned word. And here's an expression I found with plea: cop a plea. Do you know what means? Imagine you're a lawyer working for a guilty man. And as a very experienced lawyer, you think that if your client admits he's guilty of the crime, he'll get a less severe punishment. So you tell him: You should cop a plea to get reduced sentences. That's what people do as their last resort when they're guilty of a crime and want to lessen time of imprisonment. They cop a plea and hope for the best. That's it for today guys. Take care!