1 My spirit is broken.
My days are extinguished.
A graveyard h awaits me.
2 Surely mockers surround me,
and my eyes must gaze at their rebellion. i
3 Accept my pledge! Put up security for me. j
Who else will be my sponsor?
4 You have closed their minds to understanding,
therefore you will not honor them.
5 If a man denounces his friends for a price,
the eyes of his children will fail.
6 He has made me an object of scorn to the people;
I have become a man people spit at. ,k
7 My eyes have grown dim from grief,
and my whole body has become but a shadow.
8 The upright are appalled l at this,
and the innocent are roused against the godless.
9 Yet the righteous person will hold to his way,
and the one whose hands are clean m will grow stronger.
10 But come back and try again, all of you.
I will not find a wise man among you.
11 My days have slipped by;
my plans have been ruined,
even the things dear to my heart.
12 They turned night into day
and made light seem near in the face of darkness. n
13 If I await Sheol as my home,
spread out my bed in darkness,
14 and say to corruption, “You are my father,”
and to the maggot, “My mother” or “My sister,” o
15 where then is my hope? p
Who can see any hope for me?
16 Will it go down to the gates of Sheol, q
or will we descend together to the dust?
17:1–5. Job’s language is strong and bitter as he describes how his friends have mocked him (17:1–10). Although the three men came originally to comfort him (2:11), Job hears them as scoffers who speak with hostility against him (17:2). Job feels disgraced by them, as the psalmists are by people who mock them (e.g., Pss 22:7, 13; 119:51). Although he feels under attack by God (16:9–14), Job still believes that God knows he is innocent.
17:6–10. Job’s only recourse is in God, even though God seems to have failed him (17:6) by making him an object of ridicule. Job feels that he has been treated so poorly by others that people even spit in his face, which was the ultimate expression of contempt in his culture.
17:11–16. Job has lost hope in both life and death. Before his extreme adversity, Job assumed that he would live out his days in prosperity and peace (29:18–20), but now he sees it passing away quickly without his dreams coming to fruition (17:11). In 17:12 Job insists that his friends have totally misconstrued his situation. In Is 5:20, Isaiah pronounces an oracle of divine judgment against people who substitute ethical darkness for light and light for darkness, and Job uses the same language to say that what is bad the friends call good, and what is good they reject as bad.