Job 17 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

My spirit is ruined. My days are snuffed out. There is a grave waiting with my name on it.

Mockers are all around me, and my eyes have to spend the night on their bitterness.

Put down the deposit yourself. Stand as my guarantee, with you. Who else is going to shake my hand on it?

You have shut their minds against understanding, so you will not let them win this.

A man informs on his friends for a share of the takings, and his own children go blind for it.

He has made me a byword in every nation, a man people spit at when they see his face.

Grief has dimmed my eyes, and my whole frame is thin as a shadow.

Straight-living people are appalled when they see this, and the innocent are roused against the man with something to hide.

Still, the just man keeps to his road, and the one with clean hands only grows stronger.

But all of you — come back at me and try again. I will not find one wise man among you.

My days are gone. My plans are torn out, and so is everything my heart was set on.

These men turn night into day. Light is close, they tell me, with the dark already coming down.

If I am hoping for anything, it is the world of the dead for a house, and a bed I have already made up in the dark.

I have said to the pit, You are my father — and to the worm, You are my mother and my sister.

So where is my hope now? My hope — who can even see it?

Will it go down with me behind the bars of the world of the dead? Will the two of us settle into the dust together?