Job: Where Then Is My Hope?
1 “My spirit is consumed. My days are extinct and the grave is ready for me. 2 Surely there are mockers with me. My eye dwells on their provocation. 3 “Now give a pledge. Be collateral for me with yourself. Who is there who will strike hands with me? 4 For you have hidden their heart from understanding, therefore you will not exalt them. 5 He who denounces his friends for plunder, even the eyes of his children will fail. 6 “But he has made me a byword of the people. They spit in my face. 7 My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow. 8 Upright men will be astonished at this. The innocent will stir himself up against the godless. 9 Yet the righteous will hold to his way. He who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger. 10 But as for you all, come back. I will not find a wise man among you. 11 My days are past. My plans are broken off, as are the thoughts of my heart. 12 They change the night into day, saying ‘The light is near’ in the presence of darkness. 13 If I look for Sheol as my house, if I have spread my couch in the darkness, 14 if I have said to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ and ‘My sister,’ 15 where then is my hope? As for my hope, who will see it? 16 Shall it go down with me to the gates of Sheol, or descend together into the dust?”
Job asks God to stand surety for him against God, and ends by asking whether hope is something that goes down into the dust.
“My spirit is consumed. My days are extinct and the grave is ready for me.
The chapter begins where the last one ended and does not recover.
The request in verse 3 is the strangest legal figure in the book. Now give a pledge. Be collateral for me with yourself. Who is there who will strike hands with me?
Striking hands was how a guarantor accepted liability for another man's debt. Job is asking God to post the security for Job's case — against God. He has looked around for anyone willing to stand behind him, found nobody, and turned to the only party with the standing to do it, who is also the party he is in dispute with.
It is the same reach as the umpire and the witness, pushed one step further. And it is put as a question, because he knows how it sounds.
His social position is described in two images that are the opposite of what a blameless man expects. He is a byword of the people, and they spit in my face Job 17:6. The ash heap is public, and the town has an opinion.
Then two verses that do not fit their surroundings and are not usually noticed. Upright men will be astonished at this... yet the righteous will hold to his way. He who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger Job 17:8–9.
In the middle of a chapter about the grave, Job says that a righteous man does not let go, and gets stronger. He is describing himself without claiming to be the example, and the book will bear him out: he does hold on, and the holding on is the entire answer to the accusation in chapter 1.
His dismissal of the friends is flat. Come back. I will not find a wise man among you Job 17:10. And their optimism gets the sharpest description in the poem: they change the night into day, saying 'The light is near' in the presence of darkness Job 17:12. Insisting on dawn while it is still night is not comfort; it is a refusal to look at where the man actually is.
The close is a chain of conditions with no answer at the end. If Sheol is his house, if he has made his bed in the darkness, if he has said to corruption, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother' Job 17:13–14 — a family made out of decay, which is as bleak as the poem gets.
where then is my hope? As for my hope, who will see it?
And the last question is the one that matters: does it go down with me to the gates of Sheol, or descend together into the dust? Job 17:16. Job is asking whether hope is a thing that dies with the man who holds it. He does not know. Three verses into the next speech but two, he will say that it is not.
settled What this mark means