Job 17:1–18:21
Job Says He Has Become a Byword
1 “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished,
2 “aSurely mockers are with me,
And my eye 1gazes on their provocation.
3 “Lay down, now, a pledge afor me with Yourself;
Who is there that will 1be my guarantor?
4 “For You have 1akept their heart from understanding,
Therefore You will not exalt them.
5 “He who ainforms against friends for a share of the spoil,
The beyes of his children also will languish.
6 “But He has made me a abyword of the people,
And I am 1one at whom men bspit.
7 “My eye has also grown adim because of grief,
And all my bmembers are as a shadow.
8 “The upright will be appalled at this,
And the ainnocent will stir up himself against the godless.
9 “Nevertheless athe righteous will hold to his way,
And bhe who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.
10 “But come again all of 1you now,
For I ado not find a wise man among you.
11 “My adays are past, my plans are torn apart,
Even the wishes of my heart.
12 “They make night into day, saying,
‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness.
13 “If I look for aSheol as my home,
I 1make my bed in the darkness;
14 If I call to the apit, ‘You are my father’;
To the bworm, ‘my mother and my sister’;
15 Where now is amy hope?
And who regards my hope?
16 “1Will it go down with me to Sheol?
Shall we together ago down into the dust?”
1 Then Bildad the Shuhite 1responded,
2 “How long will you hunt for words?
Show understanding and then we can talk.
3 “Why are we aregarded as beasts,
As stupid in your eyes?
4 “O 1you who tear yourself in your anger—
For your sake is the earth to be abandoned,
Or the rock to be moved from its place?
5 “Indeed, the alight of the wicked goes out,
And the 1flame of his fire gives no light.
6 “The light in his tent is adarkened,
And his lamp goes out above him.
7 “His 1vigorous stride is shortened,
And his aown scheme brings him down.
8 “For he is athrown into the net by his own feet,
And he steps on the webbing.
9 “A snare seizes him by the heel,
And a trap snaps shut on him.
10 “A noose for him is hidden in the ground,
And a trap for him on the path.
11 “All around aterrors frighten him,
And bharry him at every step.
12 “His strength is afamished,
And calamity is ready at his side.
13 “1His skin is devoured by disease,
The firstborn of death adevours his 2limbs.
14 “He is atorn from 1the security of his tent,
And 2they march him before the king of bterrors.
15 “1There dwells in his tent nothing of his;
aBrimstone is scattered on his habitation.
16 “His aroots are dried below,
And his bbranch is cut off above.
17 “aMemory of him perishes from the earth,
And he has no name abroad.
18 “1He is driven from light ainto darkness,
And bchased from the inhabited world.
19 “He has no aoffspring or posterity among his people,
Nor any survivor where he sojourned.
20 “Those 1in the west are appalled at ahis 2fate,
And those 3in the east are seized with horror.
21 “Surely such are the adwellings of the wicked,
And this is the place of him who does not know God.”