Jobchapter 17
16 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 10 to 16.
The chapter
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
Where the chapter sits
Job 17 falls in Dialogue: three cycles (chapters 3–27). Job's opening complaint (3); three rounds with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar; the friends' rigid retribution theology; the third cycle breaks: Zophar does not speak again. The dialogue exhausts itself as argument.
Before it: Prose prologue: heavenly court, chapters 1–2. After it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28.
The whole shape of Job→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.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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
A. Job: He Hath Made Me a Byword of the People
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me: opens the chapter with three declarations of a man already counting himself dead, the graves plural perhaps taking in the family plot Job expects to fill alone. The line that follows, are there not mockers with me, keeps his eye fixed on the friends whose provocation surrounds him. Gill reads corrupt breath as the language of a man near his last gasp rather than a figure, matching the physical ruin the earlier chapters have already described. The two verses set the chapter's key before a single doctrine is argued: this is a man speaking from what he takes to be the edge of the grave.
Job 17:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 17:1
“My breath is corrupt,.... Through the force of his disease, which made it have an ill smell, so that it was strange and disagreeable to his wife, Job 19:17; passing through his lungs, or other parts, which were affected with some disorder, or as frequently is the case of dying persons, and so Job thought himself to be.”
Job 17:1
“My breath is corrupt - Margin or “spirit is spent.” The idea is, that his vital powers were nearly extinct; his breath failed; his power was weakened, and he was ready to die. This is connected with the previous chapter, and should not have been separated from it. There was no necessity of making a new chapter here, and we have one of those unfortunate breaks in the middle of a paragraph, and almost of a sentence, which are too common in the Scriptures.”
Job 17:2, 2 voices
Job 17:2
“Are there not mockers with me? - This has been variously translated. The Vulgate: “I have not sinned, and yet my eye dwells upon afflictions.” Septuagint: “I conjure you, laboring under afflictions, what evil have I done? Yet strangers have robbed me of my substance.” Mr. Good: “But are not revilers before me?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:2
“UMBREIT, more emphatically, "had I only not to endure mockery, in the midst of their contentions I (mine eye) would remain quiet." eye continue--Hebrew, "tarry all night"; a figure taken from sleep at night, to express undisturbed rest; opposed to (Job 16:20), when the eye of Job is represented as pouring out tears to God without rest.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2. (v. 3)
a.Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee: asks God to post a pledge on Job's behalf, the commercial figure of a surety who guarantees another man's debt with his own goods or person. Who is he that will strike hands with me carries the same figure forward, striking hands being the ancient gesture that sealed a pledge, the same act Proverbs uses of a bad bargain. Clarke and Delitzsch both read the verse as continuing the mediator language of chapter nine's daysman, now cast as a legal guarantee rather than an umpire between two parties. The plea assumes no human surety is available and asks God to be his own guarantor against the friends' charge.
Job 17:3, 2 voices
Job 17:3
“Ver. 3. Set me free, and put me beside thee, and let the hand of anyone fight against me. For He did not sin either in thought or deed: He was made to 'abide in bitterness' by His Passion, He was 'set free' by the Resurrection, He was 'put beside' the Father by His Ascension; in that having gone up into heaven He sitteth on the right hand of God.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIIpatristic
Job 17:3
“A presage of the "surety" (Heb 7:22), or "one Mediator between God and man" (see on Job 16:21). strike hands--"who else (save God Himself) could strike hands with me?" that is, be my security (Ps 119:122). The Hebrew strikes the hand of him for whom he goes security (Pr 6:1).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 4-5)
a.For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: turns Job's complaint toward heaven again, reading the friends' blindness itself as something God has withheld from them rather than a fault they chose. Therefore shalt thou not exalt them asks that men arguing from a hidden understanding not be allowed to triumph in the debate. He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail states a proverb of retribution reaching past the flatterer to his household, which Henry reads as a warning aimed at the very friends now flattering their own arguments instead of comforting Job. The two verses together accuse the friends of a fault while leaving open, in the same breath, that their blindness has a cause beyond themselves.
Job 17:4, 2 voices
Job 17:4
“For thou hast hid their heart from understanding,.... That is, the hearts of his friends, and therefore they were unfit to undertake his cause, or be sureties for him, or be judges in it.”
Job 17:4
“For thou hast hid their heart - This address is to God; and here he is represented as doing that which in the course of his providence he only permits to be done. Shalt thou not exalt them - This was exactly fulfilled: not one of Job’s friends was exalted; on the contrary, God condemned the whole; and they were not received into the Divine favor till Job sacrificed, and made intercession for them.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:5, 2 voices
Job 17:5
“He that speaketh flattery to his friends - Noyes renders this, “He that delivers up his friend as a prey, the eyes of his children shall fail.” So Wemyss, “He who delivers up his friends to plunder.” Dr. Good, “He that rebuketh his friends with mildness, even the eyes of his children shall be accomplished.” The Septuagint, “He announces evil for his portion; his eyes fail over his sons.” The Vulgate, “He promises spoil to his companions, and the eyes of his sons fail.” The word rendered “flattery” (חלק chêleq) properly means “that which is smooth, smoothness” (from חלק châlaq to be smooth); and thence it denotes “a lot” or “portion,” because “a smooth stone” was anciently used to cast lots in dividing spoils; Deu 18:”
Job 17:5
“The Hebrew for "flattery" is "smoothness"; then it came to mean a prey divided by lot, because a smooth stone was used in casting the lots (De 18:8), "a portion" (Ge 14:24). Therefore translate, "He that delivers up his friend as a prey (which the conduct of my friends implies that they would do), even the eyes," &c. [NOYES] (Job 11:20).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
4. (vv. 6-7)
a.He hath made me also a byword of the people: takes Job from private grief into public shame, his name now a proverb for ruin among people who once respected him. Aforetime I was as a tabret recalls a man whose presence was once welcomed like festival music, the contrast sharpened by nothing more than the one word aforetime. Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow and all my members are as a shadow complete the physical wasting that mirrors the social fall, sorrow spent on the body as thoroughly as scorn has been spent on the reputation. Barnes notes the tabret figure as evidence of Job's former standing, a man of music and welcome now become an object lesson.
Job 17:6, 2 voices
Job 17:6
“He hath made me also a by-word - My afflictions and calamities have become a subject of general conversation, so that my poverty and affliction are proverbial. As poor as Job, As afflicted as Job, are proverbs that have even reached our times and are still in use. Aforetime I was as a tabret - This is not the translation of the Hebrew ותפת לפנים אהיה vethopheth lephanim eheyeh. Instead of לפנים lephanim, I would read לפניהם liphneghem, and then the clause might be translated thus: I shall be as a furnace, or consuming fire (Topheth) before them.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:6
“My awful punishment makes my name execrated everywhere, as if I must have been superlatively bad to have earned it. aforetime . . . tabret--as David was honored (1Sa 18:6). Rather from a different Hebrew root, "I am treated to my face as an object of disgust," literally, "an object to be spit upon in the face" (Nu 12:14). So Raca means (Mt 5:22) [UMBREIT].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 17:7, 1 voice
Job 17:7
“Mine eye is dim by reason of sorrow - Schultens supposes that this refers to his external appearance in general, as being worn down, exhausted, “defaced” by his many troubles; but it seems rather to mean that his eyes failed on account of weeping. And all my members are as a shadow - “I am a mere skeleton, I am exhausted and emaciated by my sufferings.” It is common to speak of persons who are emaciated by sickness or famine as mere shadows. Thus, Livy (L.”
5. (vv. 8-9)
a.Upright men shall be astonied at this: predicts that Job's case, once known, will shock the very people the friends claim to represent, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite turns the debate's charge back on the accusers. The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger stands as one bare confidence set in the middle of grave imagery on both sides of it, a claim Job makes about righteousness in general even while his own case looks like its opposite. Gill reads the verse as Job's settled conviction that a right course does not depend on present appearances, a confidence that returns in fuller form at 23:10. Henry notes the abruptness of the turn, comfort spoken for one verse and then set aside as the chapter returns to darkness.
Job 17:8, 1 voice
Job 17:8
“Upright men shall be astonied - In several of these verses Job is supposed to speak prophetically of his future restoration, and of the good which religious society should derive from the history of his original affluence, consequent poverty and affliction, and final restoration to health, peace, and prosperity. The upright will receive the account with astonishment, and wonder at the dispensations of the Almighty; while hypocrites, false professors and the sour-headed, godly, shall be unmasked, and innocent men, whether in affliction or affluence, shall be known to be favourites of the Almighty.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:9, 2 voices
Job 17:9
“The righteous also shall hold on his way - The meaning of this verse is plain; but the connection is not so apparent. It seems to me that it refers to “Job himself,” and is a declaration that “he,” a righteous man, who had been so grievously calumniated, would hold on his way, and become stronger and stronger, while “they” would sink in the public esteem, and be compelled to abandon their position. It is the expression of a confident assurance that “he” would be more and more confirmed in his integrity, and would become stronger and stronger in God.”
Job 17:9
“THE man who is righteous before God has a way of his own. It is not the way of the flesh, nor the way of the world. It is a way marked out for him by the Divine command in which he walks by faith. It is the King's highway of holiness— the unclean shall not pass over it—only the ransomed of the Lord shall walk there and these shall find it a path of separation from the world.”
B. Job: If I Look for Sheol as My House, Where Is My Hope?
1. (vv. 10-11)
a.But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: dismisses the friends' arguments as spent, and for I cannot find one wise man among you states Job's verdict on the debate so far without softening it. My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart turns from the friends to Job's own ruined plans, every project a healthy man makes for his future now cut off. Clarke reads the pairing as Job closing one line of argument, the friends have nothing left to say, before opening another, his own hope has nothing left to stand on.
Job 17:10, 1 voice
Job 17:10
“Ver. 10. But as for you all, do ye turn and come now. Which same words of exhortation he properly frames to the Elect, whom he calls to the eternal world; who are bidden in two ways, viz. that they should 'turn,' and that they should 'come;' 'turn' by faith, 'come' by practice. Or indeed that they 'turn' by abandoning evil deeds, and 'come' by doing good ones; as it is written, Depart from evil, and do good: but that is wonderful which is added, And may I not find one wise man among you.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIIpatristic
Job 17:11, 1 voice
Job 17:11
“Only do not vainly speak of the restoration of health to me; for "my days are past." broken off--as the threads of the web cut off from the loom (Isa 38:12). thoughts--literally, "possessions," that is, all the feelings and fair hopes which my heart once nourished.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2. (vv. 12-14)
a.They change the night into day: is read by the commentators as the friends' false comfort, turning Job's darkness into a claim of light he does not feel, though some take it of Job's own sleepless confusion of day and night. If I wait, the grave is mine house makes the grave Job's expected home rather than an interruption of life, and I have made my bed in the darkness turns mourning into a permanent address. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister completes the figure with a family Job claims for himself in the grave, corruption and the worm standing in for every relation he has already lost, a catalogue the very next chapters will spell out by name. Delitzsch notes the boldness of naming decay as kinship, a man who has run out of living family choosing the grave's occupants as the only household left to him.
Job 17:12, 2 voices
Job 17:12
“They change the night into day - These purposes and thoughts are so very gloomy, that they change day into night. The light is short because of darkness - אור קרוב מפני חשך or karob mippeney choshek, “The light is near from the face of darkness.” I have scarcely any light: what is called light is so near akin to darkness, that it is scarcely severed from it. There is either no light, or merely such as is sufficient to render darkness visible.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:12
“Or better for "short," the Hebrew "near"; "and the light of new prosperity should be near in the face of (before) the darkness of death"; that is, they would persuade me that light is near, even though darkness approaches.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 17:13, 4 voices
Job 17:13
“Ver. 13. If I wait, hell is mine house; and I have made my bed in the darkness. For the former Saints could undergo adversity, and yet could not, when brought out of the body, be at once freed from the regions of hell; in that He had not yet come, Who should descend thereinto without sin, that He might set free those, who were there bound by right of sin.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIIpatristic
Job 17:13
“If I wait - Or more accurately, “truly I expect that the grave will be my home.” The word rendered “if” (אם 'ı̂m) is often used in such a sense. The meaning is, “I look certainly to the grave as my home. I have made up my mind to it, and have no other expectation.” The grave - Hebrew שׁאול she'ôl. It may mean here either the grave, or the region of departed spirits, to which he expected soon to descend. Mine house - My home; my permanent abode.”
Job 17:13
“Rather, "if I wait for this grave (Sheol, or the unseen world) as my house, and make my bed in the darkness (Job 17:14), and say to corruption," rather, "to the pit" or "grave," &c. Where then is my hope? [UMBREIT]. The apodosis is at Job 17:15.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 17:13
“Wait - For deliverance, I should be disappointed; for I am upon the borders of the grave, I expect no rest but in the dark grave, for which therefore I prepare myself. I endeavour to make it easy, by keeping my conscience pure, by seeing Christ lying in this bed, (so turning it into a bed of spices) and by looking beyond it to the resurrection.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 17:14, 1 voice
Job 17:14
“I have said to corruption - I came from a corrupted stock, and I must go to corruption again. The Hebrew might be thus rendered: To the ditch I have called, Thou art my father. To the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. I am in the nearest state of affinity to dissolution and corruption: I may well call them my nearest relations, as I shall soon be blended with them.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (vv. 15-16)
a.And where is now my hope?: The closing line, where is now my hope, and who shall see it, gathers up the surety plea and the surviving confidence of verse nine into one final doubt. They shall go down to the bars of the pit answers it: hope itself will not outlive Job, and their rest together in the dust joins him to it. Henry reads the final line as Job's honest limit in this speech, a hope that reaches no further than the same dust that ends every other man's case. Wesley notes the pit's bars as a figure for the grave's finality as the ancients pictured it, a gate that shuts rather than a door that opens.
Job 17:15, 2 voices
Job 17:15
“Ver. 15. Where then is now my expectation? What could be the 'expectation' of the righteous, but God who justifieth the righteous, Who should freely go down to (what was) the punishment of mankind, and by the efficacy of His righteousness set free the captives of death? For they never ceased to expect His appearing with intent expectation; they knew that it was to come, but they sought for it to come quickly. Wherefore he does not say, 'Where, then, is my expectation?' but, where then is now my expectation?”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIIpatristic
Job 17:15
“Who shall see it fulfilled? namely, the "hope" (Job 11:18) which they held out to him of restoration.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 17:16, 3 voices
Job 17:16
“Ver. 16. All of mine shall descend into the lowest hell. Whereas it appears that among those below the righteous are held bound not in places of punishment, but in the bosom of tranquillity above, an important question springs up before us, why it is that blessed Job declares, saying, All of mine shall descend into the lowest hell; who even if before the Advent of the Mediator between God and man he had to descend into hell, yet it is plain that into the lowest hell he had not to descend.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIIpatristic
Job 17:16
“They shall go down to the bars of the pit - All that I have must descend into the depths of the grave. Thither are we all going; and there alone can I rest. בדי baddey, which we translate bars, signifies also branches, distended limbs, or claws, and may here refer either to a personification of the grave, a monster who seizes on human bodies, and keeps them fast in his deadly gripe; or to the different branching-off-alleys in subterranean cemeteries, or catacombs, in which niches are made for the reception of different bodies.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 17:16
“They--namely, my hopes shall be buried with me. bars-- (Isa 38:10). Rather, the wastes or solitudes of the pit (sheol, the unseen world). rest together--the rest of me and my hope is in, &c. The word "rest" implies that man's ceaseless hopes only rob him of rest.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
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 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1361: “The Final Perseverance of the Saints” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1877); Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIII; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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