17
Job Says He Has Become a Byword
1 “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished,
The grave is ready for me.
2 “Surely mockers are with me,
And my eye gazes on their provocation.
3 “Lay down, now, a pledge for me with Yourself;
Who is there that will be my guarantor?
4 “For You have kept their heart from understanding,
Therefore You will not exalt them.
5 “He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil,
The eyes of his children also will languish.
6 “But He has made me a byword of the people,
And I am one at whom men spit.
7 “My eye has also grown dim because of grief,
And all my members are as a shadow.
8 “The upright will be appalled at this,
And the innocent will stir up himself against the godless.
9 “Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his way,
And he who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.
10 “But come again all of you now,
For I do not find a wise man among you.
11 “My days 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 Sheol as my home,
I make my bed in the darkness;
14 If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’;
To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;
15 Where now is my hope?
And who regards my hope?
16 “Will it go down with me to Sheol?
Shall we together go down into the dust?”