Job 17

³ 
“Give me a pledge (guarantee, promise) with Yourself [acknowledge my innocence before my death];
Who is there that will ^[a]be my guarantor and give security for me?
⁴ 
“But You [Lord] have closed their hearts to understanding,
Therefore You will not exalt them [by giving a verdict against me].
⁵ 
“He who denounces and informs against his friends for a share of the spoil,
The eyes of his children will also languish and fail.

⁶ 
“But He has made me a byword and mockery among the people,
And I have become one in whose face people spit.
⁷ 
“My eye has grown dim (unexpressive) because of grief,
And all my [body’s] members are [wasted away] like a shadow.
⁸ 
“The upright will be [astonished and] appalled at this,
And the innocent will stir himself up against the godless and polluted.
⁹ 
“Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his ways,
And he who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.
¹⁰ 
“But as for all of you, come back again,
Even though I do not find a wise man among you.
¹¹ 
“My days are past, my purposes and plans are frustrated and torn apart;
The wishes of my heart [are broken].
¹² 
“These [thoughts try to] make the night into the day;
‘The light is near,’ they say in the presence of darkness [but they pervert the truth].
¹³ 
“But if I look to Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead) as my home,
If I make my bed in the darkness,
¹⁴ 
If I call out to the pit (grave), ‘You are my father’;
And to the worm [that feeds on decay], ‘You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],’
¹⁵ 
Where now is my hope?
And who regards or considers or is even concerned about my hope?
¹⁶ 
“Will my hope go down with me to Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead)?
Shall we go down together in the dust?”