Job 17-18

Job 17

¹My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers with me, and mine eye abideth in their provocation.

³Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself; who is there that will strike hands with me?

⁴For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.

⁵He that denounceth his friends for a prey, even the eyes of his children shall fail.

⁶He hath made me also a byword of the people; and I am become an open abhorring.

⁷Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

⁸Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the godless.

⁹Yet shall the righteous hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But return ye, all of you, and come now: and I shall not find a wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the droughts of my heart.

¹²They change the night into a day: the fight, say they, is near unto the darkness.

¹³If I look for Sheol as mine house; if I have spread my couch in the darkness;

¹⁴If I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister;

¹⁵Where then is my hope? and as for my hope, who shall see it?

¹⁶It shall go down to the bars of Sheol, when once there is rest in the dust.

Job 18

¹Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,

²How long will ye lay snares for words? consider, and afterwards we will speak.

³Wherefore are we counted as beasts, and are become unclean in your sight?

⁴Thou that tearest thyself in thine anger, shall the earth be forsaken for thee? or shall the rock be removed out of its place?

⁵Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.

⁶The light shall be dark in his tent, and his lamp above him shall be put out.

⁷The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall cast him down.

⁸For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon the toils.

⁹A gin shall take him by the heel, and a snare shall lay hold on him.

¹⁰A noose is hid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.

¹¹Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall chase him at his heels.

¹²His strength shall be hunger-bitten and calamity shall be ready for his halting.

¹³It shall devour the members of his body, yea, the firstborn of death shall devour his members.

¹⁴He shall be rooted out of his tent wherein he trusteth; and he shall be brought to the king of terrors.

¹⁵There shall dwell in his tent that which is none of his: brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.

¹⁶His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off.

¹⁷His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.

¹⁸He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.

¹⁹He shall have neither son nor son’s son among his people, nor any remaining where he sojourned.

²⁰They that come after shall be astonied at his day, as they that went before were affrighted.

²¹Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God.