Job 17

Introduction

Job 17 continues Job's reply to Eliphaz's second speech and forms a pair with chapter 16. Where chapter 16 moved from bitter complaint toward the surprising hope of a heavenly witness, chapter 17 descends back into darkness. The chapter reads as a meditation on approaching death — Job's spirit is broken, his body is wasting, and the grave is the only home he can see ahead of him. His friends mock rather than comfort; the upright look on in horror; and the hopes that once sustained him have been shattered.

Yet even in this bleak landscape, flashes of defiance and clarity appear. Job appeals to God as his guarantor (v. 3), insists that the righteous will hold to their way despite what they see (v. 9), and challenges his friends to try again — knowing they have nothing wise to say (v. 10). The chapter ends with one of the most haunting passages in Scripture: Job imagines making his home in the grave, calling corruption "father" and the worm "mother" — and then asks, "Where then is my hope?" The question hangs unanswered, suspended between despair and the fragile witness Job has just claimed in 16:19.

A Broken Spirit and Mocking Companions (vv. 1–5)

Notes

• רוּחִי חֻבָּלָה ("my spirit is destroyed") — The verb chaval means "to destroy, to ruin" (cf. Isaiah 13:5, Song of Solomon 2:15). The BSB's "broken" softens it slightly. Job's ruach — his spirit, his life-breath, his will — has been ruined. This is the same word (ruach) that he used dismissively of his friends' speech in 16:3 ("words of wind"). Now his own ruach is spent.

• יָמַי נִזְעָכוּ ("my days are snuffed out") — The verb za'akh is rare, occurring only here in the Old Testament. It likely means "to be extinguished" or "to go out" (like a lamp or fire being snuffed). The KJV's "extinct" captures this. Job's days are not merely numbered — they have already been put out. The flame is gone.

• קְבָרִים לִי ("graves are mine") — The plural "graves" is striking. The BSB renders this as "the grave awaits me," but the Hebrew literally says "graves belong to me" or "the graveyard is mine." The plural may suggest a cemetery — Job sees himself as already among the dead. It is his inheritance, his allotment.

• הֲתֻלִים ("mockers") — This word appears only here and means "mockers" or "those who make sport of." It is related to hathal, "to mock, to deceive" (cf. Job 13:9). Job is surrounded not by friends but by people who ridicule him. The word carries a sense of hostile entertainment — they derive a perverse satisfaction from his suffering.

• שִׂימָה נָּא עָרְבֵנִי עִמָּךְ ("Put up a pledge for me with Yourself") — This is a remarkable legal metaphor. Job is asking God to be his own surety — to put up a guarantee on his behalf. In ancient law, a guarantor (arev) was someone who pledged to stand behind another person's case or debt. The phrase "strike hands" (yittaqea, v. 3b) refers to the ancient custom of clasping hands to seal a pledge (cf. Proverbs 6:1, Proverbs 17:18, Proverbs 22:26). Job looks around and sees no one on earth willing to guarantee his case — so he turns to God Himself, asking the very One who seems to be his adversary to also be his guarantor. This is the same paradox as 16:19-21: appealing to God against God.

• כִּי לִבָּם צָפַנְתָּ מִשָּׂכֶל ("for You have hidden their hearts from understanding") — Job attributes his friends' obtuseness not to their own stupidity but to God's sovereign action. God has concealed insight from them. This is a bold theological claim: their failure to understand Job's suffering is itself part of God's design. The BSB's "closed their minds" captures the sense well.

• Verse 5 is one of the most obscure verses in Job. The general sense seems to be a proverb about betrayal: a man who informs on or betrays his friends for personal advantage will see his own children suffer. Job may be indirectly comparing his friends to such a betrayer — they have "turned in" an innocent man to gain God's approval, and their own families will pay the price.

Made a Byword, Yet the Righteous Endure (vv. 6–10)

Notes

• מָשָׁל ("byword/proverb") — The word mashal can mean a proverb, a parable, or a taunt-song. When used of a person, it means someone who has become a proverbial example of suffering — a cautionary tale others point to (cf. Deuteronomy 28:37, 1 Kings 9:7, Psalm 44:14). Job has become the poster child for divine judgment, held up by others as proof that God punishes sinners. The same word is used for the title of the book of Proverbs (Mishlei), adding irony: Job himself has become a "proverb" — just not the kind his friends would recognize.

• וְתֹ֖פֶת לְ/פָנִ֣ים אֶֽהְיֶֽה ("one in whose face they spit") — The word tophet is difficult. The BSB interprets it as a word for spitting (from tuph, "to spit"), which fits the context of public shame. The KJV rendered it "aforetime I was as a tabret" (a drum), suggesting Job has become something people beat on. The spitting interpretation is more widely accepted and fits the pattern of public humiliation.

• כַּצֵּל ("like a shadow") — Job's body has wasted away to the point where it is merely a shadow — insubstantial, two-dimensional, a pale outline of what it once was. The image connects to 14:2 where Job compared human life to "a shadow that does not last."

• Verse 9 is striking because it sounds like something Job's friends might say, yet Job says it himself. The righteous will hold to their way; the person with clean hands will grow stronger. Job is not abandoning his conviction about moral order. He is stating it as a principle — and implicitly applying it to himself. He is the righteous one who holds to his way despite everything. He is the one with clean hands (16:17) who refuses to let go. The verse is both a general truth and a personal declaration of resolve.

• טְהָר יָדַיִם ("clean hands") — This phrase echoes Psalm 24:4 ("clean hands and a pure heart") and Psalm 73:13 ("I have kept my hands clean"). Clean hands symbolize moral innocence — freedom from wrongdoing. Job used the same image in 16:17 ("my hands are free of violence"). The claim is consistent and emphatic.

• Verse 10 drips with sarcasm. Job invites his friends to try again — go ahead, give it another shot. But he already knows the outcome: not a single wise person among them. The word chakham (חָכָם, "wise") is loaded in the wisdom literature. These men consider themselves sages, experts in the ways of God. Job flatly denies it.

Descending into the Grave (vv. 11–16)

Notes

• זִמֹּתַי נִתְּקוּ ("my plans are torn apart") — The word zimmah can mean "plan, purpose, thought" or in negative contexts "scheme, wickedness." Here it means Job's plans, his designs for the future, his ambitions. They have been nitteku — torn, pulled apart, ripped away. Everything Job once hoped for has been violently dismantled. The BSB's "broken off" is close but misses the violence of the image.

• Verse 12 is Job's sarcastic characterization of his friends' counsel. They tell him the night is really day — that his suffering is actually a sign of God's nearness, that light is just around the corner. Job sees this as delusional optimism, a refusal to face the reality of his darkness. The friends have, in effect, tried to rename his experience: what he knows to be night, they insist is almost dawn.

• שְׁאוֹל — The Hebrew concept of the underworld, the realm of the dead. It is not equivalent to the Christian concept of hell. It is a shadowy, silent place where all the dead go — both righteous and wicked. It is characterized by darkness, silence, and the absence of praise (Psalm 6:5, Psalm 88:10-12, Psalm 115:17). Job imagines making it his permanent home.

• יָצַעְתִּי ("I have spread/made my bed") — The image of "making one's bed" in Sheol personifies death as a form of rest — but not a peaceful one. Job is preparing for an eternal lying down in darkness. The image recalls Psalm 139:8 ("If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there"), though Job does not share the psalmist's confidence.

• שַׁחַת ("corruption/the pit") — This word means both "destruction/corruption" (the decomposition of the body) and "the pit" (a synonym for the grave or Sheol). Job addresses decomposition as "my father" — the one who begot him, the one to whom he will return. The rimmah (רִמָּה, "maggot/worm") is called "mother" and "sister" — his closest family. This is Job's most grotesque imagery, and it serves to invert the created order: instead of family, friends, and future, Job has only decay and worms as his kindred.

• תִּקְוָתִי ("my hope") — The word tiqvah means "hope" or "expectation." It comes from qavah, "to wait, to hope" — the same root used in Isaiah 40:31 ("those who wait upon the LORD"). Job asks the question twice — "Where is my hope?" and "My hope — who can see it?" — as if turning it over, searching for any trace of it. The repetition is not redundancy but desperation.

• בַּדֵּי שְׁאוֹל ("the bars of Sheol") — The baddim are the bars or bolts of the gates of Sheol. The underworld was conceived of as a fortified city with gates and bars that lock the dead inside (cf. Isaiah 38:10, Jonah 2:6, Matthew 16:18 "the gates of Hades"). Job asks whether his hope will descend with him behind those bars — whether it too will be locked away in the realm of the dead.

• יָחַד ("together") — The final word of the chapter is devastating in its loneliness. Job and his hope — will they go down together into the dust? The only companion he has left is his hope, and even that may be dying. Yet the fact that he asks the question rather than declaring it may suggest that the hope is not quite extinguished. The question itself is a kind of hope — the hope that hopes it is not dead yet.

• The chapter ends without resolution. Job is suspended between the heavenly witness he affirmed in 16:19 and the grave he describes here. This tension is the engine of the book of Job: the refusal to let go of God even when God seems to have let go of him.