Job 17
What Happens in This Chapter
Job answers his friends again, saying his spirit is broken, his days are used up, and the grave is waiting for him. He asks God to put up a pledge for him, since no one else will stand as his guarantor, and he says the friends around him are mockers with no wisdom in them. He describes himself as a byword to people, his eyes dim with grief and his body a shadow, and he says his plans are cut off. He ends by calling decay his father and the worm his mother, then asking where his hope is now.
My spirit is broken. My days are burned out. The grave is ready for me.
1My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.
"My days are extinct" translates an image of a lamp or fire burning out; the Hebrew word for "grave" here is plural, a way of saying the burial ground stands waiting.
2Mockers are all around me, aren't they? My eyes have to keep looking at their insults.
2Are there not mockers with me? and doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?
The people Job is answering are his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who came to comfort him and have spent several chapters arguing that his suffering must be punishment for something he did.
3Please put down a pledge for me with yourself. Who else is going to guarantee my debt?
3Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee; who is he that will strike hands with me?
This is the language of a loan. A debt could be secured by a third party who put up his own goods as a pledge, and the deal was closed by the two men striking hands, the ancient equivalent of a signature. Job wants such a guarantor before he can bring his case, and since no one else will do it, he asks God to post the pledge with God's own self.
4You have closed their minds so they cannot understand. That is why you will not let them win.
4For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.
5The man who turns in his friends for a reward will find the eyes of his own children failing.
5He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail.
The first half of the verse is obscure in Hebrew; it seems to be a proverb about a man who informs on his friends for a share of the profit. "The eyes of his children fail" is a standard curse formula meaning his children waste away or are left with nothing to look forward to.
6God has made me a word people use when they talk about a ruined man. People spit in my face.
6He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret.
A "byword" is a name that has turned into a saying, so that people use it as shorthand for disaster or as an insult. The King James Version ends the verse "I was as a tabret" (a tambourine): the Hebrew word is uncertain, and translators divide between something like a drum beaten in public and "one in whose face people spit."
7My eyes have gone dim from grief. My whole body is nothing but a shadow.
7Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.
8Honest people are shocked when they see this, and the innocent are stirred up against the godless.
8Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.
Where the rendering says "godless," the King James says "hypocrite." In 1611 that word covered any irreligious or profane person, not only someone putting on a false front, and the Hebrew word behind it means godless.
9Still, the person who does right keeps to his road, and the one whose hands are clean grows stronger and stronger.
9The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.
"Clean hands" is a standard idiom for innocence of any crime, drawn from the practice of washing the hands to declare oneself free of guilt.
10But all of you, come back and try again. I will not find one wise man among you.
10But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find one wise man among you.
11My days are over. My plans are snapped off, and so are the hopes I held in my heart.
11My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.
12These men turn night into daytime. In the middle of darkness they say the light is close.
12They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness.
The Hebrew here is difficult. Job appears to be throwing his friends' words back at them: they keep insisting that his night will shortly become morning and that light is just around the corner.
13If the only home I can look for is the place of the dead, and I spread out my bed there in the dark,
13If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.
"The place of the dead" is Sheol, pictured throughout the Hebrew Bible as a dark region under the earth where everyone who dies goes, good and bad alike. It is not the later idea of hell as a place of punishment.
14and if I say to the rotting grave, "You are my father," and to the worm, "You are my mother and my sister,"
14I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.
Calling the grave "father" and the worm "mother" and "sister" uses the ordinary words for family relationships: Job is saying decay and worms are the only household he has left to be adopted into.
15then where is my hope now? Who can see any hope for me at all?
15And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?
16It will go down with me to the gates of the place of the dead, when we rest together in the dust.
16They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.
The King James "bars of the pit" reflects the standard picture of the place of the dead as a walled city with gates that are barred from the inside, so that no one who enters gets out. The Hebrew does not make clear what "it" is that goes down, whether Job's hope, Job himself, or both together, and translators differ.
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