Job 17

¹ My spirit is broken, my lamp of life extinguished; my burial is at hand.

² I am indeed mocked, and, as their provocation mounts, my eyes grow dim.

³ Grant me one to offer you a pledge on my behalf: who is there that will give surety for me?

⁴ You darken their minds to knowledge; therefore they do not understand.

⁵ My lot is described as evil,

⁶ and I am made a byword of the people; their object lesson I have become.

⁷ My eye has grown blind with anguish, and all my frame is shrunken to a shadow.

⁸ Upright men are astonished at this, and the innocent aroused against the wicked.

⁹ Yet the righteous shall hold to his way, and he who has clean hands increase in strength.

¹⁰ But turn now, and come on again; for I shall not find a wise man among you!

¹¹ My days are passed away, my plans are at an end, the cherished purposes of my heart.

¹² Such men change the night into day; where there is darkness they talk of approaching light.

¹³ If I look for the nether world as my dwelling, if I spread my couch in the darkness,

¹⁴ If I must call corruption "my father," and the maggot "my mother" and "my sister,"

¹⁵ Where then is my hope, and my prosperity, who shall see?

¹⁶ Will they descend with me into the nether world? Shall we go down together into the dust?