Job 17:16 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They shall go down to the bars of the pit They that would see my hope must go down into the grave, or rather into the invisible world, to behold it. Or, he means, My hope shall go down, of which he spake in the singular number, Job 17:15, and which he here changes into the plural, as is usual in these poetical books. Thus Houbigant renders this clause: It, namely, my hope, shall descend together with me into the grave: it shall rest with me in the dust. My hopes of temporal good are dying, and will be buried in my grave, where I and they, and I and my friends, shall lie together. Remember, reader, we must all shortly lie in the dust, under the bars of the pit; held fast there, till the general resurrection. And all good men, if, like Job and his friends, they cannot agree now, will there rest together. Let the foresight of this cool the heat of all contenders, and moderate the disputers of this world.