Job 17

17TH CHAPTER

Job Pleads with God to Declare Him Honest

¹“My spirit is broken. 

My days have been snuffed out. 

The cemetery ⸤is waiting⸥ for me. 

²Certainly, mockers are around me. 

My eyes are focused on their opposition. 

³Please guarantee my bail yourself. 

Who else will guarantee it with a handshake? 

⁴You have closed their minds so that they cannot understand. 

That is why you will not honor them. 

⁵(Whoever turns in friends to get their property 

should have his children’s eyesight fail.) 

Job Says to His Friends: I’m Still Wiser Than You

⁶“Now he has made me a laughingstock for many people. 

Now they spit in my face. 

⁷Now my eyes are blurred from grief. 

Now all my limbs are like a shadow. 

⁸Decent people are shocked by this, 

and it stirs up the innocent against godless people. 

⁹Yet, the righteous person clings to his way, 

and the one with clean hands grows stronger. 

¹⁰“But now, all of you, come and try again! 

I won’t find one wise man among you. 

¹¹My days are passing by. 

My plans are broken. 

My dreams ⸤are shattered⸥. 

¹²You say that night is day. 

Light has nearly become darkness. 

¹³If I look for the grave as my home 

and make my bed in the darkness, 

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

and to the worm, ‘You are my mother and sister,’ 

¹⁵then where is my hope? 

Can you see any hope left in me? 

¹⁶Will hope go down with me to the gates of the grave? 

Will my hope rest with me in the dust?”