Job Seeks Hope
“My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished;
The grave is ready for me.
2 Surely mockers are with me,
And my eye gazes on their provocation.
3 “Establish, now, a pledge for me with Yourself;
Who is there that will clap my hand in pledge?
4 For You have hidden their heart from insight,
Therefore You will not exalt them.
5 He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil,
The eyes of his children also will come to an end.
6 “But He has made me a byword of the people,
And I am one at whom men spit.
7 My eye has also grown dim because of grief,
And all my members are as a shadow.
8 The upright will be appalled at this,
And the innocent will stir up himself against the godless.
9 Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his way,
And he who has clean hands will grow mightier and mightier.
10 But come again all of you now,
For I do not find a wise man among you.
11 My days are past; my plans are torn apart,
Even the wishes of my heart.
12 They make night into day, saying,
‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness.
13 If I hope for Sheol as my home,
I make my bed in the darkness;
14 If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’;
To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;
15 Where now is my hope?
And who beholds my hope?
16 Will it go down with me to Sheol?
Shall we together go down into the dust?”