Job 17:10-16

The Voice

¹⁰     By contrast, I look to you, my friends, and I say,
        “Come ahead, all of you; try your words once more.”
    I still won’t expect to find a wise man among you.
¹¹     Even now my days have passed me by;
        My plans lie broken at my feet;
        the secret wishes of my heart grow cold.
¹²     And yet my friends say, this loss of hope is for good,
        turning my dark night into what appears to them as day.
    In the pitch darkness, these broken plans and secret wishes speak to me.
        They say, “There is light nearby.”
¹³     If I hope only to live in the land of the dead,
        if I prepare for myself a bed in the darkness,
¹⁴     If I speak to my burial pit, calling it “Father,”
        and to the worms in the earth, calling them “Mother” and “Sister,”
¹⁵     Then where will I find my hope?
        And who will see it?
¹⁶     Will hope go with me to the place of death?
        Will hope accompany me into the ground?