Job, 17

1. My breathing is growing weaker and the gravediggers are gathering for me.

2. Scoffers are my only companions, their harshness haunts my nights.

3. So you must go bail for me to yourself, for which of them cares to clap his hand on mine?

4. For you have shut their hearts to reason, hence not a hand is lifted.

5. Just so is a man who invites his friends to share his property while the eyes of his own children languish.

6. I have become a byword among foreigners, and a creature on whose face to spit,

7. since I am nearly blind with grief and my limbs are reduced to a shadow.

8. Any honest person is appalled at the sight, the innocent is indignant at the sinner.

9. Anyone upright grows stronger step by step: and anyone whose hands are clean grows ever in vigour!

10. Come on then, all of you, back to the attack! I shall not find one wise man among you!

11. My days are over, so are my plans, my heart-strings are broken;

12. yet they would have me believe that night is day, that light to dispel the darkness is at hand,

13. when all I want, in fact, is to dwell in Sheol and in that darkness there to make my bed!

14. To the tomb, I cry, 'You are my father!' -- to the worm, 'You are my mother-you, my sister!'

15. Where then is my hope? Who can see any happiness for me?

16. unless they come down to Sheol with me, all of us sinking into the dust together?