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Job 17

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

My spirit is broken

1 My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished; the grave is ready for me. 2 Surely there are mockers around me, and my eye lingers on their provocation.

3 Give a pledge, please; be my surety with Yourself. Who else will strike hands with me? 4 For You have hidden understanding from their heart; therefore You will not exalt them. 5 He who betrays his friends for a share, the eyes of his children will fail.

6 He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I have become one in whose face they spit. 7 My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow. 8 The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless. 9 Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.

10 But all of you, come back now, come; I shall not find a wise man among you. 11 My days are past, my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart. 12 They turn night into day; they make light seem near in the face of darkness.

Where then is my hope?

13 If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I spread out my bed in darkness, 14 if I say to the pit, "You are my father," and to the worm, "My mother and my sister," 15 where then is my hope? And my hope, who will see it? 16 Will they go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we rest together in the dust?

Notes

  • 17:3 "Give a pledge" and "be my surety" are words of the marketplace: one who stood surety for another guaranteed his debt, and the agreement was sealed by striking hands (Proverbs 6:1; 17:18). Since no one else will stand for Job, he asks Elohim Himself to be his guarantor before Himself, the same daring hope as his witness in heaven (16:19-21).
  • 17:9 In the middle of his despair Job says that the righteous man holds to his way and grows stronger. Many readers hear in it Job's own resolve not to let go of his integrity, which he will state again (27:5-6), though the Hebrew allows the line to be read as a general truth that Job sets against his friends' easy conclusions.
  • 17:13 Sheol is the realm of the dead (see the note at 7:9). In verses 13-16 Job speaks of it as the house where he will make his bed in darkness, and of the pit and the worm as his nearest family. If that is all he can look forward to, he asks, where is his hope?
  • 17:16 "They" are Job's hopes, named twice in verse 15. Sheol is pictured as a city whose gates are shut with bars (Isaiah 38:10 and Job 38:17 also speak of the gates of Sheol and of death): will his hope go down into the grave with him? Here the question is left without an answer; in 19:25-27 Job will speak quite differently.

Job 16 · Job 18

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