Job 17 AMPC

1. MY SPIRIT is broken, my days are spent (snuffed out); the grave is ready for me.

2. Surely there are mockers and mockery around me, and my eye dwells on their obstinacy, insults, and resistance.

3. Give me a pledge with Yourself [acknowledge my innocence before my death]; who is there that will give security for me?

4. But their hearts [Lord] You have closed to understanding; therefore You will not let them triumph [by giving them a verdict against me].

5. He who denounces his friends [in order to make them] a prey and get a share, the eyes of his children shall fail [to find food].

6. But He has made me a byword among the people, and they spit before my face.

7. My eye has grown dim because of grief, and all my members are [wasted away] like a shadow.

8. Upright men shall be astonished and appalled at this, and the innocent shall stir himself up against the godless and polluted.

9. Yet shall the righteous (those upright and in right standing with God) hold to their ways, and he who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger. [Ps. 24:4.]

10. But as for you, come on again, all of you, though I find not a wise man among you.

11. My days are past, my purposes and plans are frustrated; even the thoughts (desires and possessions) of my heart [are broken off].

12. These [thoughts] extend from the night into the day, [so that] the light is short because of darkness.

13. But if I look to Sheol (the unseen state) as my abode, if I spread my couch in the darkness,

14. If I say to the grave and corruption, You are my father, and to the worm [that feeds on decay], You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],

15. Where then is my hope? And if I have hope, who will see [its fulfillment]?

16. [My hope] shall go down to the bars of Sheol (the unseen state) when once there is rest in the dust.