Job 17

Job Prays for Relief

¹⁷“My 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 who 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 who 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.’^x

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?”^*