Jobchapter 17
16 verses · BSBJob book hub →
Speaks with:Isaiah 38×4Job 16×2Job 7×2Psalms 88×1Job 17×11 Samuel 1×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Job's reply closes in exhaustion. 'My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me' (17:1). Mockers are with him, and his eye abides on their provocation. He asks God to post the bond no man will post: give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself; who else will strike hands with me? Thou hast hid their heart from understanding. He has been made a byword of the people, one in whose face men spit. If Sheol is the house he looks for, if he has said to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, My mother: 'where then is my hope?'
Context
Poetry · Unknown — Job overview
- A. 1–9 Job: He Hath Made Me a Byword of the People
- B. 10–16 Job: If I Look for Sheol as My House, Where Is My Hope?
The outline
A.Job: He Hath Made Me a Byword of the Peoplevv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.Job: If I Look for Sheol as My House, Where Is My Hope?vv. 10 to 16
Read vv. 10 to 16 →
The world behind this chapter
Job 17The history
Job asks for a surety — a guarantor. In ancient contracts a third party pledged himself for a debtor by striking hands, and Job's request, 'who is he that will strike hands with me?', is the formal gesture of that pledge. He can find no one on earth willing to stand for him, and asks God to do it.
He says he has been made 'a byword of the people' — the name a village used as a shorthand for disgrace — and that men strike him on the face, or in some renderings spit before him. Either way it is the public treatment given to a man everyone has decided is guilty.
The failing eyesight he mentions is medical, not poetic: his eye is dim by reason of sorrow, and his limbs are like a shadow. Prolonged illness and weeping did that, and hearers would not have read it as metaphor.
The last lines make the grave his household. If I wait, the grave is my house; I have made my bed in the darkness; I have said to corruption, You are my father, and to the worm, You are my mother and my sister. Family language for the pit is as bleak as the ancient world gets — the burial cave, where the bones of the family lay together, becomes the only kin he has left.
What it meant to them
The chapter's point is that Job has no earthly place to stand. The friends will not vouch for him, the town has written him off, and his body is going.
That emptiness is what makes the next chapter's answer land the way it does. The book is clearing the field of every other help before Job says the thing he says in chapter 19.
Sources cited
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 17. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.