Job, 17

1. My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves [are ready] for me.

1. My spirit is broken, my days are over and the grave awaits me.

2. [Are there] not mockers with me? and doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?

2. Mockers surround me; my eyes grow dim with nights of bitterness.

3. Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee; who [is] he [that] will strike hands with me?

3. Sponsor me, O God, since no one will support me.

4. For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt [them].

4. You have closed their minds so they will not dare.

5. He that speaketh flattery to [his] friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail.

5. Who will help a friend when his sons are in need?

6. He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret.

6. I have been made everybody's byword, a man in whose face people spit.

7. Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members [are] as a shadow.

7. My eyes have grown dim with grief, my frame shrunken to a shadow.

8. Upright [men] shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.

8. At this, upright men are appalled, and the guiltless rail against the wicked.

9. The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.

9. The righteous feel at ease and those with clean hands are strengthened.

10. But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find [one] wise [man] among you.

10. But come on again, all of you; I will not find a single sage among you.

11. My days are past, my purposes are broken off, [even] the thoughts of my heart.

11. My days are ended, my plans shattered, and so my heart desires

12. They change the night into day: the light [is] short because of darkness.

12. the night when it is day, the coming of light as soon as it darkens.

13. If I wait, the grave [is] mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.

13. Where is my hope? The grave is my home, in the darkness I spread out my bed,

14. I have said to corruption, Thou [art] my father: to the worm, [Thou art] my mother, and my sister.

14. I must call corruption "my father," and the worm "my mother" or "my sister."

15. And where [is] now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?

15. What can I wait for, and who will see any hope for me?

16. They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when [our] rest together [is] in the dust.

16. Will it go down to the bars of death, shall we descend together into the dust?