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.
17:2 Job means his three friends.⚜
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.
17:8-9 Job knows that what has happened to him amazes the righteous, but he is confident that they will not be stumbled by it. In fact, he thinks it may well promote righteous living. This is the opposite of the opinion expressed by Eliphaz in Job 15:4.⚜
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”.
17:10-16 As for himself Job questions whether there is any hope that conditions will improve for him. So it won’t matter if his friends attack and accuse him again. And they are not slow to accept the invitation he gives them in v 10.⚜