Job 17:1-16·~1 min

Job Prepares for Death

Job says his spirit is broken, his days are extinguished, and graves lie ready for him while mockers remain beside him. He asks God to provide the pledge he demands, since no one else will strike hands for him, and he says the friends have been shut away from understanding so that they cannot be exalted, like someone whose betrayal of companions brings ruin even on his children.

“¹My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; ²Surely mockers surround me, ³Give me, I pray, the pledge You demand. ⁴You have closed their minds to understanding; ⁵If a man denounces his friends for a price,

Job says he has become a byword to the people and one before whom men spit. His eyes are dim from grief and his body reduced to shadow, yet he insists that the upright will be appalled and stirred on by what they see, while he challenges the friends to return again, certain that none of them will prove wise.

⁶He has made me a byword among the people, ⁷My eyes have grown dim with grief, ⁸The upright are appalled at this, ⁹Yet a righteous one holds to his way, ¹⁰But come back and try again, all of you.

Job says his days are gone, his plans shattered, and the desires of his heart torn away, while others try to turn night into day with thin assurances of coming light. He sees Sheol as his house, darkness as his bed, corruption as his father, and the worm as his kin, and he asks where his hope can now be found if it descends with him through the gates of death into the dust.

¹¹My days have passed; my plans are broken off — ¹²They have turned night into day, ¹³If I look for Sheol as my home, ¹⁴and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ ¹⁵where then is my hope? ¹⁶Will it go down to the gates of Sheol?

Section summaryJob says his life is failing and that the grave is waiting while mockers keep watch over him. He asks God himself to stand surety for him because the friends have been closed off from understanding, says the righteous will still persist though no wisdom can be found among these companions, and finally describes his plans as broken and the underworld as his only remaining house, asking where hope can possibly be found if it goes down with him into the dust.

Role in the chapterThis single section gathers together Job's exhaustion, his rejection of the friends, and his confrontation with death. It continues the movement toward mediation from the previous chapter but now sets it under the heavy nearness of the grave rather than under any expectation of relief in this life.