ESV - Job Chapter 17 to 19

17 Job Continues: Where Then Is My Hope?

17:1 My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me. ²Surely there are mockers about me, and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³“Lay down a pledge for me with yourself; who is there who will put up security for me? ⁴Since you have closed their hearts to understanding, therefore you will not let them triumph. ⁵He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property— the eyes of his children will fail.

⁶“He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit. ⁷My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow. ⁸The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless. ⁹Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger. ¹⁰But you, come on again, all of you, and I shall not find a wise man among you. ¹¹My days are past; my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart. ¹²They make night into day; ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’^[1]¹³If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, ¹⁴if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ ¹⁵where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? ¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?”

[1] The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain

18 Bildad Speaks: God Punishes the Wicked

18:1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

²“How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and then we will speak. ³Why are we counted as cattle? Why are we stupid in your sight? ⁴You who tear yourself in your anger, shall the earth be forsaken for you, or the rock be removed out of its place?

⁵“Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out, and the flame of his fire does not shine. ⁶The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp above him is put out. ⁷His strong steps are shortened, and his own schemes throw him down. ⁸For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks on its mesh. ⁹A trap seizes him by the heel; a snare lays hold of him. ¹⁰A rope is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him in the path. ¹¹Terrors frighten him on every side, and chase him at his heels. ¹²His strength is famished, and calamity is ready for his stumbling. ¹³It consumes the parts of his skin; the firstborn of death consumes his limbs. ¹⁴He is torn from the tent in which he trusted and is brought to the king of terrors. ¹⁵In his tent dwells that which is none of his; sulfur is scattered over his habitation. ¹⁶His roots dry up beneath, and his branches wither above. ¹⁷His memory perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the street. ¹⁸He is thrust from light into darkness, and driven out of the world. ¹⁹He has no posterity or progeny among his people, and no survivor where he used to live. ²⁰They of the west are appalled at his day, and horror seizes them of the east. ²¹Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous, such is the place of him who knows not God.”

19 Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives

19:1 Then Job answered and said:

²“How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? ³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? ⁴And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. ⁵If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me, ⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me. ⁷Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. ⁸He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. ⁹He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head. ¹⁰He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. ¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. ¹²His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp[2] against me and encamp around my tent.

¹³“He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. ¹⁴My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me. ¹⁵The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes. ¹⁶I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy. ¹⁷My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother. ¹⁸Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. ¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. ²⁰My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. ²¹Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! ²²Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

²³“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! ²⁴Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! ²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.^[3]²⁶And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in[4] my flesh I shall see God, ²⁷whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! ²⁸If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ ²⁹be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”

[2] Hebrew their way [3] Hebrew dust [4] Or without