17
📚“My breath is corrupt✭, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me.2 📚✭Are not mockers with me? My eye gazes on their provocation.
3 📚“Now put down a pledge for me with yourself✭. Who else is there who will give his hand in pledge?
4 📚For you have hidden their heart from understanding; therefore you will not exalt them.
5 📚If one speaks flattery to his friends even the eyes of his children will fail.
6 📚“He has made me a byword to the people, and I have become one at whom men spit.
7 📚And my eye has become dim because of sorrow, and my limbs are like shadows.
8 📚✭Upright men are astonished at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the hypocrite.
9 📚And the righteous will hold to his way, and the one with clean hands will become stronger and stronger.
10 📚✭“But come on, all of you, try again! But I will not find a wise man among you.
11 📚My days are past, my plans are shattered, and the thoughts of my heart are crushed.
12 📚They change night into day, and say ‘Light is near’, in the presence of darkness.
13 📚If I await the grave✭ as my house, If I make my bed in darkness,
14 📚If I say to corruption, ‘You are my father!’ and to the worm, ‘My mother!’ and ‘My sister!’
15 📚Where then would my hope be? Who could see my hope?
16 📚It would go down with me to the gates of death. We would descend together into the dust”.