Job 17

¹ My breathing is growing weaker and the gravediggers are gathering for me.

² Scoffers are my only companions, their harshness haunts my nights.

³ So you must go bail for me to yourself, for which of them cares to clap his hand on mine?

⁴ For you have shut their hearts to reason, hence not a hand is lifted.

⁵ Just so is a man who invites his friends to share his property while the eyes of his own childrenlanguish.

⁶ I have become a byword among foreigners, and a creature on whose face to spit,

⁷ since I am nearly blind with grief and my limbs are reduced to a shadow.

⁸ Any honest person is appal ed at the sight, the innocent is indignant at the sinner.

⁹ Anyone upright grows stronger step by step: and anyone whose hands are clean grows ever in vigour!

¹⁰ Come on then, al of you, back to the attack! I shall not find one wise man among you!

¹¹ My days are over, so are my plans, my heart-strings are broken;

¹² yet they would have me believe that night is day, that light to dispel the darkness is at hand,

¹³ when al I want, in fact, is to dwel in Sheol and in that darkness there to make my bed!

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? Who can see any happiness for me?

¹⁶ unless they come down to Sheol with me, all of us sinking into the dust together?