Job — Chapter 17

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: This chapter finishes the speech Job began in chapter 16, his reply to Eliphaz in the second round of the debate. In chapter 16 he called his friends "miserable comforters" (16:2), described God as a warrior tearing him apart (16:9–14), and then reached up to heaven: "my witness is in heaven" (16:19). He longed for someone to "argue the case of a man with God" (16:21), because he expected to die in "a few years" (16:22). Chapter 17 picks up from there. The hope of chapter 16 has not gone away, but the mood sinks again. Job feels death is not years off but at the door (v1). He asks God to stand surety for him, since no one on earth will (vv3–5). He describes himself as a public joke (vv6–9), turns once more on his friends (v10), and closes by facing the grave with almost no hope at all (vv11–16). The speech that rose to "my witness is in heaven" ends with "Shall we descend together into the dust?" That swing between faith and despair is honest, and it is part of why the book of Job helps people who suffer.

Job Continues: My Spirit Is Broken (vv1–16)

• "My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me" (v1). Three short lines, each a step closer to the end. The Tyndale notes point out that a "broken spirit" can mean a repentant heart, as in Psalm 51:17, but here it means a crushed, sorrowful spirit, as in Proverbs 18:14: "a crushed spirit who can bear?" "My days are extinct" pictures a lamp burning out. JFB calls his life "an expiring light." In 16:22 Job spoke of "a few years." Now even that seems generous. "Graveyard" is plural in Hebrew, literally "graves," which JFB takes as a way of adding weight: the burial ground is waiting. Matthew Henry turns it into a lesson for every reader: "Wherever we go there is but a step between us and the grave."
• "Surely there are mockers about me, and my eye dwells on their provocation" (v2). The "mockers" are his friends. They came "to show him sympathy and comfort him" (2:11), and now Job can't take his eyes off their taunts. The Tyndale notes observe that mocking the righteous sufferer is a common theme in the psalms of lament (Ps 22:7; 69:10–12), and that in wisdom writing it is the mark of the scoffer (Prov 1:22; 9:7). JFB notes that the Hebrew behind "dwells" is literally "tarry all night." Job's eye lodges with their taunts, day and night.
• "Lay down a pledge for me with you; who is there who will put up security for me?" (v3). Job now speaks directly to God, in the language of debts and guarantees. In the ancient world, when someone borrowed or promised, another person could "go surety," guaranteeing the debt with his own property or even his life. The verb here is 'arab, "to pledge" or "to go surety for." It is the word Judah uses when he tells his father, "I will be a pledge of his safety" (Gen 43:9; 44:32), and the word Hezekiah uses in his sickness: "O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety!" (Isa 38:14; compare Ps 119:122). The lexicon notes that the Hebrew form of Job 17:3 is a little uncertain, which is why translations differ slightly, but the sense is clear. "Put up security" is literally "strike hands," the handshake that sealed a guarantee in Proverbs (Prov 17:18; 22:26). Job is saying that no one on earth will shake on it for him. His friends certainly won't. So he asks God to put down the deposit himself, guaranteeing that Job's case will be heard and that he will be found innocent.
• The strange shape of v3. As in 16:19–21, Job is asking God to stand up for him before God. He is caught between two pictures of God: the one who seems to attack him, and the one who alone can vindicate him. The Tyndale notes suggest two ways to read the pledge. It may echo the idea of God himself providing what is owed, or it may be one more expression of Job's longing for an advocate (16:19–21). JFB reads it as "be my surety; do Thou attest my innocence," and links it to the idea of a mediator. The cross-references reach forward to Hebrews 7:22, where Jesus is "the guarantor of a better covenant." The Greek word there means a surety, the very role Job is begging someone to fill.
• "Since you have closed their hearts to understanding, therefore you will not let them triumph" (v4). Job explains why he cannot look to his friends. God has kept them from understanding his case. So, Job reasons, God will not let them come out on top. The friends think they are speaking for God. Job believes God will not back them. At the end of the book, God proves him right: "you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7).
• "He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—the eyes of his children will fail" (v5). This sounds like a proverb. It describes someone who betrays his friends for gain, perhaps by bringing charges so he can share in the spoils. Its punishment falls on his children. Older translations read it differently: the KJV has "he that speaketh flattery to his friends." JFB explains the difference. The Hebrew word means "smoothness," which can mean smooth talk, but it came to mean a "prey divided by lot," a share of the spoils. Either way, Job is warning his friends. They are condemning a friend, in effect, to keep their tidy theology intact, and that is a dangerous thing to do.
• "He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit" (v6). A "byword" is mashal, the same word used for a proverb. Job's name has become a saying people repeat about ruin. The lexicon lists the same use in Deuteronomy 28:37 and Psalm 69:11, where disgrace turns a person or nation into a byword. "One before whom men spit" uses a word, topheth, that occurs only here in the Old Testament. The lexicon gives it as "act of spitting," literally "a spitting in the face." The Tyndale notes add that spitting in someone's face was worse than a slap, since it made a person ceremonially unclean (Num 12:14). Henry comments that "it is common for those who were honoured in their wealth to be despised in their poverty." Job had been the greatest man in the East (1:3). Now people spit at him.
• "My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow" (v7). Grief has dimmed his sight, and his body has wasted away until his limbs seem to have no more substance than a shadow. JFB notes that "members" is literally "forms" or "figures," his bodily shape, now reduced to nearly nothing.
• "The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless" (v8). Here the tone changes. Good people, Job says, will be shocked to see what has happened to him. JFB says they are "astonied" at his "unmerited sufferings." The "godless" may be the friends, whom Job sees as hypocrites for condemning him. The Tyndale notes mention that some scholars think vv8–9 are out of place because they sound so confident, but they also offer another possibility: Job may be quoting his opponents' kind of language, with irony. Most readers take the verses at face value, as a flash of conviction in the middle of despair.
• "Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger" (v9). This is one of the great lines of the chapter, and it stands out against everything around it. Job is dying, mocked and spat on, yet he says the righteous person does not let go. He keeps walking the same road, and the pressure makes him stronger, not weaker. "Clean hands" echoes his claim in 16:17: "there is no violence in my hands." Job is describing himself as much as anyone. He will not give up his integrity (compare 27:5–6). Henry gives a vivid picture: "The blustering wind makes the traveller gather his cloak the closer about him and gird it the faster." JFB agrees: "The strength of religious principle is heightened by misfortune."
• "But you, come on again, all of you, and I shall not find a wise man among you" (v10). Job turns back to the friends. They can have another try, all three of them, but he expects nothing better. In 12:2 he said sarcastically, "wisdom will die with you." Now he says he cannot find one wise man in the group.
• "My days are past; my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart" (v11). Everything Job hoped for has been cut short. JFB compares his plans to threads snapped off at the loom. The word for "desires" is unusual and may mean "possessions" or what is held most dear. The point is that his heart's hopes have been taken away along with his health and family.
• "They make night into day: 'The light,' they say, 'is near to the darkness'" (v12). "They" are the friends. Their advice was always that if Job repented, things would brighten. Zophar said, "your life will be brighter than the noonday; its darkness will be like the morning" (11:17), and Eliphaz promised much the same (5:17–26). Job says this is like calling night day. JFB explains that they try "to persuade me of the change of my misery into joy." Guzik reads it as Job mocking that promise. They tell him light is near, but all Job can see is darkness closing in.
• "If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness" (v13). Sheol is the Hebrew name for the realm of the dead, the shadowy place where everyone, good or bad, was thought to go at death. The Tyndale notes say people imagined it as a "house" or home (30:23; Ps 49:11; Eccl 12:5). Job pictures himself moving in and making up his bed there. Henry says, "The grave is a house; to the wicked it is a prison-house," and of Job's bed, "It is made, for it is ready, and I am just going to it." JFB notes that the sentence is incomplete until v15. The "if" clauses in vv13–14 build up, and the question in v15 delivers the point.
• "If I say to the pit, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother,' or 'My sister'" (v14). This is a grim picture of a family reunion in the grave. "Pit" is shachath. The lexicon gives its sense as the pit of Sheol, and notes that in this verse it is personified, set side by side with the worm. "Worm" is rimmah, the maggot that feeds on a corpse. Job used the same word for his own living body, "clothed with worms" (7:5), and it appears again where rich and poor alike "lie down in the dust, and worms cover them" (21:26). The Tyndale notes call this a sad imitation of a family gathering in a cemetery. JFB says calling them "father" and "mother" means the closest possible kinship. Job is so near death, and his body so far gone, that decay feels like family.
• "Where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?" (v15). This is the question the whole speech has been building toward. If the grave is his house and the worm his sister, where is the hope his friends keep promising? Who will ever see it come true? JFB takes it as referring to the hope of restoration the friends offered. Job does not see how it could happen.
• "Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?" (v16). The Tyndale notes explain that Sheol was pictured with gates and bars that let no one out. Job imagines his hope following him through those gates and being locked in with him. JFB: "my hopes shall be buried with me." The chapter ends here, in the dust. Yet only a few chapters later, Job will say, "I know that my Redeemer lives" (19:25). His despair in 17:16 is real, but it is not the last word in his own story.
• Commentators: All three agree that v3 is Job asking God himself to guarantee his innocence, since no human will. Guzik follows the NIV, "Give me, O God, the pledge you demand," and paraphrases it as Job saying God must put things right because Job cannot, and he connects this with the New Covenant, where God provides the reconciliation people cannot make. Henry draws the same line to Christ: "if he undertake for us, we need not fear what can be done against us." On v9 Guzik sees victory through endurance, gradual and not sudden, and passes on F.B. Meyer's comfort that believers hold on because Jesus holds them. Guzik and Henry both read v12 as Job rejecting the friends' promise of brighter days. Guzik cites Adam Clarke on vv15–16: Job's hope looks uncertain because "the true light" had not yet come, and only Christ brought life and immortality fully to light (2 Tim 1:10). Henry's outline sees Job in vv13–16 making "death and the grave familiar to him, which yielded him some comfort." That is a warmer reading than the text itself, which sounds closer to despair. JFB, written in the 1800s, takes v1 as the effect of a particular disease, elephantiasis. That is one old guess at Job's illness, and the text never names it. JFB comments on every verse of this chapter.

Pointing to Christ

Job asked, "Who is there who will put up security for me?" and no one on earth would. He asked God himself to lay down the pledge. The New Testament gives the answer. Jesus "has become the guarantor of a better covenant" (Heb 7:22). Like Judah offering himself for Benjamin (Gen 44:32–33), he did not only promise to cover a debt. He paid it with his own life. Job 17 also points to Christ in his suffering. Job became a byword, and men spat in his face. Jesus was mocked by the crowds, and "they spit in his face and struck him" (Matt 26:67). He held to his way when everyone else let go. And Job's last question, "Shall we descend together into the dust?", has a different answer because of the cross. Jesus went down into death himself, and the bars of Sheol could not hold him. He "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim 1:10). In him, hope does not go down into the dust. It comes back out of the grave.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes that chapter 17 is Job's darkest moment — the point where hope seems completely extinguished. Yet v.9 stands as an island of faith: the righteous hold their way and grow stronger. Guzik suggests this is Job's subconscious faith speaking despite his conscious despair — the truth he believes even when he cannot feel it. The chapter also shows that faith's darkest night often precedes faith's brightest declaration (ch. 19).
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Permission to Be Broken (v.1) — Job's admission that his spirit is broken stands in Scripture without any correction or condemnation attached to it. Do you feel you have to perform spiritual strength, or can you admit brokenness to God as an act of honest faith?
• When No One Will Vouch for You (v.3) — With every human guarantor gone, Job asks God Himself to be his surety, since no one else will stand up for him. When you feel like every earthly support has failed, can you still turn to God as the one who vouches for you?
• Growing Stronger Through the Trial (v.9) — In the middle of his despair, Job affirms that the righteous who hold their way grow stronger, not despite the hardship but through it. Can you trust that the difficulty you're in now is building something in you rather than only breaking you down?
• Despair That Isn't the Final Word (vv.11-16) — Job describes his hope as dead and the grave as his only home, using the language of total finality even though this was not actually where his story ended. When your despair feels permanent, can you hold on to the possibility that God isn't finished writing your story yet?