Job 17

Job is worn out, mocked by those around him, and sure that he is near death. He turns from his unhelpful friends and asks God Himself to stand surety for him. The chapter ends in deep darkness, as Job wonders whether any hope remains beyond the grave.

Job 17:1

Job feels his strength and life draining away. His inner spirit is crushed, his days are running out, and he sees the grave as already prepared for him. This is the honest speech of a suffering man, not a calm statement of doctrine.

BSA: spirit (“breath of life, the wind, or a person’s mind and emotions”): Job’s very breath and inner life feel worn down, not just his mood. extinguished (“put out, ended, or cut off”): His life is pictured as a lamp being snuffed out.

Job 17:2

Job says he is hemmed in by people who scorn him. He cannot look away from their hostility. The sharpest pain is that these mockers include the friends who came to comfort him.

BSA: mockers (“those who scorn, deride”): These are people who treat his suffering with contempt rather than pity.

Job 17:3

Job asks God to put up the pledge, the security that would vouch for his innocence. No human will do it, so he asks God to be his own guarantor. It is a bold prayer: he appeals from God to God.

BSA: guarantor (“one who will vouch for me, stand in my place”): Job longs for someone who will stand in his place and answer for him.

Hebrew: עָרְבֵנִי (ʿorvēnî, H6148) — “be my surety, pledge for me.” This is the language of the marketplace, where one person puts down security for another. Job asks God to do this for him.

See also: Job 16:19; Hebrews 7:22.

Job 17:4

Job says his friends have failed because God has hidden insight from them. They lecture him confidently but do not understand what is really happening. So Job trusts that God will not lift them up in the end.

BSA: minds (“hearts, inner beings”): In Scripture the heart is the center of thinking, so their whole way of reasoning is blocked.

Job 17:5

Job uses a proverb-like saying about betraying friends for gain. Someone who informs against his companions for a reward brings harm on his own family. Job is pointing at the unfaithfulness of the friends who accuse him.

BSA: denounces (“speaks flattery to, tells lies about”): The betrayal involves false or slippery words spoken against a friend.

Job 17:6

Job feels that God has made him an example of shame. People use his name as a proverb for misery, and some spit in his face. Spitting was a deep public insult. He is a man humiliated before all.

BSA: byword (“byword of ridicule, proverb of shame”): His name has become a saying people use to mock misfortune. spit (“as a sign of utter disdain, to show contempt”): Spitting in the face showed complete scorn.

See also: Isaiah 50:6.

Job 17:7

Grief has dimmed Job’s eyesight and wasted his body until he is like a shadow of his old self. Long weeping and pain have left him thin and frail.

BSA: shadow (“dark area, shade”): His body has lost its substance, like a faint outline of a man.

Job 17:8-9

Honest people are shocked at how Job is treated, and they are stirred against hypocrisy. Yet Job holds that the righteous person keeps to God’s way. Clean hands and a clean life, even in suffering, bring fresh strength rather than weakness.

BSA: appalled (“astonished, desolate”): The upright are stunned that such suffering falls on a good man. stronger (“in courage, with increasing power”): Holding on to God’s way brings growing courage even in trouble.

See also: Psalm 24:3-4.

Job 17:10

Job invites his friends to make their case again. He is not impressed. After all their speeches he says he still cannot find a truly wise man among them, because they have missed the real point of his suffering.

BSA: wise (“intelligent, skilled, prudent”): Job says they lack the practical understanding needed to read his situation rightly.

Job 17:11

Job’s life is slipping away, and his plans and heart’s desires have been torn up. Everything he once hoped to do has been cut off. Suffering has taken more than his health; it has taken his future.

BSA: plans (“purposes, desires”): These are the things he meant to do with his life. broken off (“cut off, torn away”): The picture is of a thread or rope violently snapped.

Job 17:12

Job says his friends talk nonsense when they claim that night is day and that light is near. They offer easy promises of restoration, but his darkness is real. False comfort does not change the facts.

BSA: darkness (“a state of adversity”): The darkness stands for his whole condition of trouble, not only the night.

Job 17:13-14

Job pictures death as a house he is moving into. He makes his bed in the dark, and calls decay his father and the worm his mother and sister. These are painfully vivid words for the grave as his only family.

BSA: Sheol (“the underworld, place of no return”): It is the shadowy place of the dead, which Job sees as his coming home. worm (“maggot”): The word is blunt and shocking, showing how low Job feels.

Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל (shᵉʾôl, H7585) — “Sheol, the realm of the dead.” In the Old Testament this is the place where all the dead go. It is often pictured as dark and silent, and it is how Job speaks of death here.

See also: Job 10:21-22.

Job 17:15

Job asks where his hope has gone. He asks twice, and no one can answer. In his present pain he cannot see any hope, and he says so honestly.

BSA: hope (“expectation, cord of attachment”): Hope is like a cord that ties a person to the future, and Job feels his has been cut.

Hebrew: תִּקְוָתִי (tiqwātî, H8615) — “my hope.” The word is related to a word for cord or rope. Hope is what you hold on to, and Job feels it slipping from his hands.

Job 17:16

Job closes with a question: will hope go down with him to the gates of Sheol, and will they rest together in the dust? He ends in darkness, yet he has still voiced a longing for someone to stand for him, which later chapters take further.

BSA: gates (“bars, entrance”): The picture is of the barred door of the world of the dead.

See also: Job 19:25-27.