Job Prays for Relief

¹“My spirit is broken,

my days are extinguished,

the grave is ready for me.

²Are not mockers with me?[#Job 12:4]

And does not my eye dwell on their provocation?

³“Now put down a pledge for me with Yourself.[#Ps 119:122; Pr 11:15]

Who is he who will shake hands with me?

⁴For You have hidden their heart from understanding.

Therefore will You not exalt them.

⁵He who speaks flattery to his friends,

even the eyes of his children will fail.

⁶“And He has made me a byword of the people,[#Job 30:9; Ps 44:14]

someone in whose face they spit.

⁷My eye also is dim because of sorrow,[#Ps 6:7]

and all my members are like a shadow.

⁸Upright men will be astonished at this,

and the innocent will stir up himself against the hypocrite.

⁹The righteous also will hold to his way,[#Pr 4:18]

and he who has clean hands will be stronger and stronger.

¹⁰“But as for you all, return and come now,[#Job 6:29]

for I cannot find one wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past, my purposes are broken off,[#Job 7:6]

even the thoughts of my heart.

¹²They change the night into day;

the light is short because of darkness.

¹³If I wait, the grave is my house;

I have made my bed in the darkness.

¹⁴I have said to the pit, ‘You are my father’;[#Ps 16:10]

to the worm, ‘You are my mother and my sister.’

¹⁵Where now is my hope?

As for my hope, who will see it?

¹⁶Will they go down to the gates of Sheol?[#Job 3:17–19; Jon 2:6]

Will we descend together in the dust?”