Job, 17

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

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

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

2. [Are there] not mockers with me? and doth not mine eye continue in 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 now, put me in a surety with thee; who [is] he [that] will strike hands with me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be 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 as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find [one] wise [man] among you.

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

11. My days are past, my purposes are broken off, [even] the thoughts 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 change the night into day: the light [is] short because of 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 wait, the grave [is] mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.

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

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

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

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

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

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