Job 17

¹My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct,

The grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers with me,

And mine eye dwelleth upon their provocation.

³Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself;

Who is there that will strike hands with me?

⁴For thou hast hid their heart from understanding:

Therefore shalt thou not exalt them.

⁵He that denounceth his friends for a prey,

Even the eyes of his children shall fail.

⁶But he hath made me a byword of the people;

And they spit in my face.

⁷Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow,

And all my members are as a shadow.

⁸Upright men shall be astonished at this,

And the innocent shall stir up himself against the godless.

⁹Yet shall the righteous hold on his way,

And he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But as for you all, come on now again;

And I shall not find a wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past, my purposes are broken off,

Even the thoughts of my heart.

¹²They change the night into day:

The light, say they, is near unto the darkness.

¹³If I look for Sheol as my house;

If I have spread my couch in the darkness;

¹⁴If I have said to corruption, Thou art my father;

To the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister;

¹⁵Where then is my hope?

And as for my hope, who shall see it?

¹⁶It shall go down to the bars of Sheol,

When once there is rest in the dust.