Job 17: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

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.

Claim by Claim

1. 17:1
   • Job says his spirit is broken.
   • Job says his days are extinguished.
   • Job says graves are ready for him.
2. 17:2
   • Job says mockers are with him.
   • Job says his eye dwells on their provocation.
3. 17:3
   • Job asks God to lay down a pledge for him with God himself.
   • Job asks who else there is that will strike hands with him as guarantor.
4. 17:4
   • Job says God has hidden the heart of these men from understanding.
   • Job says that therefore God will not exalt them.
5. 17:5
   • Job says a man denounces his friends for a share of the spoil.
   • Job says the eyes of that man's children will fail.
6. 17:6
   • Job says God has made him a byword of the peoples.
   • Job says he has become one in whose face people spit.
7. 17:7
   • Job says his eye has grown dim from grief.
   • Job says all his limbs are like a shadow.
8. 17:8
   • Job says upright men are appalled at this.
   • Job says the innocent man stirs himself up against the godless.
9. 17:9
   • Job says the righteous man holds to his way.
   • Job says the one with clean hands grows stronger.
10. 17:10
    • Job tells all of them to return and come again.
    • Job says he cannot find one wise man among them.
11. 17:11
    • Job says his days are past.
    • Job says his plans are broken off.
    • Job says the desires of his heart are broken off.
12. 17:12
    • Job says they turn night into day.
    • Job says light is near in the face of darkness.
13. 17:13
    • Job says that if he waits, the grave is his house.
    • Job says he has spread out his bed in the darkness.
14. 17:14
    • Job says he has said to the pit of decay, You are my father.
    • Job says he has said to the worm, You are my mother and my sister.
15. 17:15
    • Job asks where his hope is then.
    • Job asks who will see his hope.
16. 17:16
    • Job says they will go down to the bars of the grave.
    • Job says their rest together is in the dust.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

17:1

"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.

17:2

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.

17:3

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.

17:4

"Them" means Job's three friends, who came to comfort him and ended up accusing him instead. Job is speaking straight to God about them here.

17:5

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.

17:6

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."

17:7

"Members" in 1611 English meant limbs and body parts, not people who belong to a group. Job is saying his whole body has wasted down to something as thin as a shadow.

17:8

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.

17:9

"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.

17:10

The "you all" is Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who came to comfort him and have spent most of the book arguing that his suffering must be punishment for something he did. He is inviting them to start their arguments over, and telling them in advance that it will get them nowhere.

17:12

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.

17:13

"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.

17:14

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.

17:16

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.