Job 17

NEW AMERICAN BIBLE	NEW JERUSALEM
1 My spirit is broken, my lamp of life extinguished; my burial is at hand.	1 My breathing is growing weaker and the gravediggers are gathering for me.
2 I am indeed mocked, and, as their provocation mounts, my eyes grow dim.	2 Scoffers are my only companions, their harshness haunts my nights.
3 Grant me one to offer you a pledge on my behalf: who is there that will give surety for me?	3 So you must go bail for me to yourself, for which of them cares to clap his hand on mine?
4 You darken their minds to knowledge; therefore they do not understand.	4 For you have shut their hearts to reason, hence not a hand is lifted.
5 My lot is described as evil,	5 Just so is a man who invites his friends to share his property while the eyes of his own childrenlanguish.
6 and I am made a byword of the people; their object lesson I have become.	6 I have become a byword among foreigners, and a creature on whose face to spit,
7 My eye has grown blind with anguish, and all my frame is shrunken to a shadow.	7 since I am nearly blind with grief and my limbs are reduced to a shadow.
8 Upright men are astonished at this, and the innocent aroused against the wicked.	8 Any honest person is appal ed at the sight, the innocent is indignant at the sinner.
9 Yet the righteous shall hold to his way, and he who has clean hands increase in strength.	9 Anyone upright grows stronger step by step: and anyone whose hands are clean grows ever in vigour!
10 But turn now, and come on again; for I shall not find a wise man among you!	10 Come on then, al of you, back to the attack! I shall not find one wise man among you!
11 My days are passed away, my plans are at an end, the cherished purposes of my heart.	11 My days are over, so are my plans, my heart-strings are broken;
12 Such men change the night into day; where there is darkness they talk of approaching light.	12 yet they would have me believe that night is day, that light to dispel the darkness is at hand,
13 If I look for the nether world as my dwelling, if I spread my couch in the darkness,	13 when al I want, in fact, is to dwel in Sheol and in that darkness there to make my bed!
14 If I must call corruption "my father," and the maggot "my mother" and "my sister,"	14 To the tomb, I cry, 'You are my father!' -- to the worm, 'You are my mother-you, my sister!'
15 Where then is my hope, and my prosperity, who shall see?	15 Where then is my hope? Who can see any happiness for me?
16 Will they descend with me into the nether world? Shall we go down together into the dust?	16 unless they come down to Sheol with me, all of us sinking into the dust together?