Job 17

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