CHAPTER 17

              ²  So help me, mockery is with me,

                     in their galling   my eye wakes through the night.

              ³Come, stand pledge for me,

                     who will offer his handshake for me?

              ⁴Since their   heart You hid from reason,

                     and so You will not exalt them.

              ⁵  For profit he informs on friends,

                     and his sons’ eyes waste away.

              ⁶He has made me a byword of peoples,

                       spit in the face, I became.

              ⁷My eye is bleared from anguish,

                     and my limbs are all like shadow.

              ⁸The upright are outraged by this,

                     and the innocent roused over the tainted.

              ⁹  The righteous will cling to his way,

                     and the clean of hands augment in strength.

              ¹⁰And yet, all of you, return and come,

                     but I won’t find a wise man among you.

              ¹¹My days have passed,

                     my plans pulled apart,

                           the desires of my heart.

              ¹²  Night they would turn into day,

                     “Light is near”—in the face of darkness.

              ¹³  If I hope for Sheol as my home,

                     that I might cushion my couch with darkness,

              ¹⁴to the Pit I would say, “My father you are;

                     my mother and sister, the worm,”

              ¹⁵where then is my hope,

                     and   my good—who can glimpse it?

              ¹⁶  Will it go down to the bars of Sheol,

                     altogether in the dust will it plunge?