Job 17
About JobWritten by AI
Job is a long poem framed by a short story. A good man loses his wealth, his children, and his health, and no one tells him why. The writer and the date are unknown: the story is set in the age of the patriarchs, but the book may have been written much later, and Christians hold different views on when. Some Jewish tradition credits Moses.
After two prose chapters, Job and three friends trade speeches in rounds. The friends insist suffering must be punishment for sin; Job insists he is innocent and pleads for God to answer him. A younger man, Elihu, speaks next. Then the LORD Himself answers out of the whirlwind, and the story closes in prose.
Read the friends with care. They say many true things about God, but they apply them wrongly, and at the end God says they have not spoken of Him accurately as Job has (42:7). Watch for Job's flashes of hope in the dark: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Before you read Job 17Written by AI
Job's spirit is broken and he expects to die soon. Mockers surround him, and he has become a byword. He asks God to stand surety for him, since no one else will. He finds no wise man among his friends and wonders where his hope could possibly be.
Job Prepares for Death
“My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished;
the grave awaits me.
Surely mockers surround me,
and my eyes must gaze at their rebellion.
Give me, I pray, the pledge You demand.
Who else will be my guarantor?
You have closed their minds to understanding;
therefore You will not exalt them.
If a man denounces his friends for a price,
the eyes of his children will fail.
He has made me a byword among the people,
a man in whose face they spit.
My eyes have grown dim with grief,
and my whole body is but a shadow.
The upright are appalled at this,
and the innocent are stirred against the godless.
Yet a righteous one holds to his way,
and the one with clean hands grows stronger.
But come back and try again, all of you.
For I will not find a wise man among you.
My days have passed; my plans are broken off—
even the desires of my heart.
They have turned night into day,
making light seem near in the face of darkness.
If I look for Sheol as my home,
if I spread out my bed in darkness,
and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’
and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
where then is my hope?
Who can see any hope for me?
Will it go down to the gates of Sheol?
Will we go down together into the dust?”