Job
Chapter 17
My spirit is broken, my days are over and the grave awaits me.
Mockers surround me; my eyes grow dim with nights of bitterness.
Sponsor me, O God, since no one will support me.
You have closed their minds so they will not dare.
Who will help a friend when his children are in need?
I have become everybody’s byword, a man in whose face people spit.
My eyes have grown dim with grief, my body shrinks to a shadow.
At this, the godly are shocked, and the guiltless complain against the wicked.
The righteous feel secure and those with clean hands are strengthened.
Come on, all of you again; I will not find a single wise person among you.
My days are over, my plans shattered, and so my heart longs
for the night when it is day, for the light to come as soon as it darkens.
Where is my hope? The grave is my home, in the darkness, I spread out my bed,
I must call corruption “my father,” and the worm “my mother” or “my sister.”
What can I wait for, and who will see any hope for me?
Will it go down to the bars of death, shall we descend together into the dust?
Commentaries
Job’s Response to Eliphaz.
Job becomes impatient and wishes his friends were in his place so he could return their treatment. His thoughts often drift between heaven and earth, speaking to either God or his friends. Job responds not with repentance but with expressions of pain and sorrow (16:15; cf. 1:20), like someone sensing death is near (16:18-17:2). An Old Testament belief held that the blood of an innocent victim cried out from the ground for justice—for example, Abel’s blood (Gn 4:10). Job hopes that after his lips are sealed in death, his blood will still cry out. Once seeking an arbitrator between himself and God, now he longs for a witness or intercessor above (16:19), likely a member of the heavenly Council who, unlike Satan, will intercede for him. Feeling forgotten, alone, and mocked, his thoughts turn to death (17:11-16), as depicted through bleak images: the land of the dead (17:13-16), darkness (17:13), decay and worms (17:14), and dust (17:16).