Job 17

The AIT Bible

Job's Plea and Despair

1My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the graves are ready for me.

2Surely mockeries are with me, and my eye must dwell on their provocation.

3Lay down now a pledge for me with yourself; who else is there that will strike hands with me?

4For you have hidden their heart from understanding; therefore you will not let them triumph.

5He who denounces friends for a share — the eyes of his children will fail.

6He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I have become one in whose face they spit.

7My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my limbs are like a shadow.

8The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent rouses himself against the godless.

9Yet the righteous holds fast to his way, and the one with clean hands increases in strength.

10But as for all of you, turn back and come now — I will not find a wise man among you.

11My days have passed, my plans are torn away, the desires of my heart.

12They make night into day; light, they say, is near, in the face of darkness.

13If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I spread my bed in the darkness,

14if I call out to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ to the worm, ‘My mother’ and ‘My sister’ —

15where then is my hope? And my hope — who will see it?

16Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we together find rest in the dust?

Open in the interactive reader →