✧“My spirit is consumed. My days are extinct and the grave is ready for me. ✧2Surely 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? ✧4For you have hidden their heart from understanding, therefore you will not exalt them. ✧5He 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. ✧7My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow. ✧8Upright men will be astonished at this. The innocent will stir himself up against the godless. ✧9Yet the righteous will hold to his way. He who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger. ✧10But as for you all, come back. I will not find a wise man among you. ✧11My days are past. My plans are broken off, as are the thoughts of my heart. ✧12They change the night into day, saying ‘The light is near’ in the presence of darkness. ✧13If I look for Sheol as my house, if I have spread my couch in the darkness, ✧14if I have said to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ and ‘My sister,’ ✧15where then is my hope? As for my hope, who will see it? ✧16Shall it go down with me to the gates of Sheol, or descend together into the dust?”