Job 17

¹My spirit is broken, my days are extinct,

the grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers around me,

and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³“Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;

who is there that will give surety for me?

⁴Since you have closed their minds to understanding,

therefore you will not let them triumph.

⁵Those who denounce friends for reward—

the eyes of their children will fail.

⁶“He has made me a byword of the peoples,

and I am one before whom people spit.

⁷My eye has grown dim from grief,

and all my members are like a shadow.

⁸The upright are appalled at this,

and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.

⁹Yet the righteous hold to their way,

and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But you, come back now, all of you,

and I shall not find a sensible person among you.

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

the desires of my heart.

¹²They make night into day;

‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’

¹³If I look for Sheol as my house,

if I spread my couch in darkness,

¹⁴if I say to the Pit, ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

¹⁵where then is my hope?

Who will see my hope?

¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?

Shall we descend together into the dust?”