Job, 17

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

1. My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me.

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

2. Surely there are mockers about me, and my eye dwells on their provocation.

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

3. "Lay down a pledge for me with thyself; who is there that will give surety for me?

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

4. Since thou hast closed their minds to understanding, therefore thou wilt not let them triumph.

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

5. He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property, the eyes of his children will fail.

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

6. "He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit.

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

7. My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow.

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

8. Upright men are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

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

9. Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he that has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.

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

10. But you, come on again, all of you, and I shall not find a wise man among you.

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

11. My days are past, my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart.

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

12. They make night into day; `The light,' they say, `is near to the darkness.'

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

13. If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness,

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

14. if I say to the pit, `You are my father,' and to the worm, `My mother,' or `My sister,'

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

15. where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?

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

16. Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?"