My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.
Parallel translations
- WEB “My spirit is consumed. My days are extinct, And the grave is ready for me.
- BSB “My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; the grave awaits me.
- NKJV “My spirit is broken, My days are extinguished, The grave is ready for me.
- NASB “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, The grave is ready for me.
- NLT “My spirit is crushed, and my life is nearly snuffed out. The grave is ready to receive me.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Job feels his spirit broken, his days spent, and the grave waiting for him. He stands at the edge of despair and death.
Overview
Job describes himself as crushed in spirit, his life ebbing away, the tomb ready to receive him. The language conveys utter exhaustion and the sense that death is imminent. Such honest expression of being at the end of oneself is not faithless; it casts the sufferer wholly on God, who alone has power over the grave.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Isa 38:10–14I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.
- Ps 88:3–5For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
- Job 6:11What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?
- Job 42:16After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.
- Job 19:17My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.
- Job 17:13–14If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.
- Isa 57:16For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 17:1 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.