Job 17
EasyEnglish Bible
Job continues to speak
17 I am very weak and I will soon die.
Then my friends will bury me in my grave.
2 All around me, people are laughing at me.
I have to watch them as they insult me.
3 God, please help me to become free again.
Nobody else will pay the price to do that for me.
4 You have stopped my friends from thinking properly.
So do not allow them to win the argument.
5 People may turn against their friends
to get things for themselves.
If they do that, their children should become blind.
6 You have caused people to insult me,
like that proverb says.
People even spit at my face.
7 I have cried so much that my eyes have become weak.
My body is so thin that I am like a shadow.
8 Good people are upset,
when they see what is happening to me.
They are angry with those who turn away from you.
9 Righteous people continue to do things that are right.
People who do good things become stronger.
10 But you, my friends, come here!
Try again to help me, all of you!
I will not find a wise man among you.
11 I will not live for many more days.
I will never do the things that I wanted to do.
12 My friends say, “It is day”,
when it is still night.
They do not know the difference between light and dark.
13 The only home that I hope to go to is my grave.
I will lie down to sleep there in the dark.
14 I will say to the grave,
“You are my father.”
I will say to the worms that eat me,
“Hello, my mother. Hello, my sister.”
15 I can hope for nothing that is better than that.
No one can find anything better for me.
16 When I go to the world of dead people,
all my hope will have finished.
Everything that I had hoped for will lie with me in the dust.’
Job 17
Complete Jewish Bible
17 “My spirit is broken, my days are quenched,
I am marked for the grave.
2 Mockers are all around me;
my eye meets only their hostility.
3 Be my guarantor, yourself!
Who else will put up a pledge for me?
4 For you have shut their minds to common sense;
therefore you will not let them triumph.
5 Should people share with their friends
when their own children’s eyes are so sad?
6 “He has made me a byword among the peoples,
a creature in whose face they spit.
7 I am nearly blind with grief,
my limbs reduced to a shadow.
8 The upright are perplexed at this,
the innocent aroused against the hypocrites.
9 Yet the righteous hold on to their way,
and those with clean hands grow stronger and stronger.
10 “But as for you all, turn around! Come back! —
yet I won’t find a wise man among you.
11 My days are over, my plans cut off,
which I had cherished so;
12 but they [try to] turn [my] night into day,
[saying,] ‘Light is near!’ — in the face of darkness.
13 “If I hope for Sh’ol to be my house;
if I spread my couch in the dark;
14 if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’
and to worms, ‘You are my mother and sister,’
15 then where is my hope?
And that hope of mine, who will see it?
16 Only those who go down with me
to the bars of Sh’ol,
when we rest together in the dust.”
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