Job 17  New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

³ ‘Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
    who is there that will give surety for me?
⁴ Since you have closed their minds to understanding,
    therefore you will not let them triumph.
⁵ Those who denounce friends for reward—
    the eyes of their children will fail.

⁶ ‘He has made me a byword of the peoples,
    and I am one before whom people spit.
⁷ My eye has grown dim from grief,
    and all my members are like a shadow.
⁸ The upright are appalled at this,
    and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.
⁹ Yet the righteous hold to their way,
    and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.
¹⁰ But you, come back now, all of you,
    and I shall not find a sensible person among you.
¹¹ My days are past, my plans are broken off,
    the desires of my heart.
¹² They make night into day;
    “The light”, they say, “is near to the darkness.”^[a]
13 If I look for Sheol as my house,
    if I spread my couch in darkness,
¹⁴ if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”,
    and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”,
¹⁵ where then is my hope?
    Who will see my hope?
¹⁶ Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
    Shall we descend together into the dust?’