Job 17 :: English Standard Version (ESV)

Job Continues: Where Then Is My Hope?

Job 17:1

Job 17:1“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct;
the graveyard is ready for me.

Job 17:2

Job 17:2Surely there are mockers about me,
and my eye dwells on their provocation.

Job 17:3

Job 17:3“Lay down a pledge for me with you;
who is there who will put up security for me?

Job 17:4

Job 17:4Since you have closed their hearts to understanding,
therefore you will not let them triumph.

Job 17:5

Job 17:5He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—
the eyes of his children will fail.

Job 17:6

Job 17:6“He has made me a byword of the peoples,
and I am one before whom men spit.

Job 17:7

Job 17:7My eye has grown dim from vexation,
and all my members are like a shadow.

Job 17:8

Job 17:8The upright are appalled at this,
and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

Job 17:9

Job 17:9Yet the righteous holds to his way,
and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.

Job 17:10

Job 17:10But you, come on again, all of you,
and I shall not find a wise man among you.

Job 17:11

Job 17:11My days are past; my plans are broken off,
the desires of my heart.

Job 17:12

Job 17:12They make night into day:
‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’[fn]

Job 17:13

Job 17:13If I hope for Sheol as my house,
if I make my bed in darkness,

Job 17:14

Job 17:14if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’
and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

Job 17:15

Job 17:15where then is my hope?
Who will see my hope?

Job 17:16

Job 17:16Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
Shall we descend together into the dust?”[fn]

See the ESV Preface (Especially for Parenthesis, Brackets, & Asterisks).

ESV Footnotes

(17:12)

The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain

(17:16)

Or Will they go down to the bars of Sheol? Is rest to be found together in the dust?

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For more information on this translation, see the ESV Preface.