Chapter 17

¹“My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct,

And the grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers with me,

My eye dwells on their provocation.

³“Now give a pledge, be collateral for me with yourself.

Who is there who will strike hands with me?

⁴For you have hidden their heart from understanding,

Therefore shall you not exalt them.

⁵He who denounces his friends for a prey,

Even the eyes of his children shall fail.

⁶“But he has made me a byword of the people.

They spit in my face.

⁷My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow.

All my members are as a shadow.

⁸Upright men shall be astonished at this.

The innocent shall stir up himself against the godless.

⁹Yet shall the righteous hold on his way.

He who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But as for you all, come on now again;

I shall not find a wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past, my plans are broken off,

As are the thoughts of my heart.

¹²They change the night into day,

Saying ‘The light is near’ in the presence of darkness.

¹³If I look for Sheol as my house,

If I have spread my couch in the darkness,

¹⁴If I have said to corruption, ‘You are my father;’

To the worm, ‘My mother,’ and ‘my sister;’

¹⁵Where then is my hope?

As for my hope, who shall see it?

¹⁶Shall it go down with me to the gates of Sheol,

Or descend together into the dust?”