Job 17:9

The righteous also shall hold on Or, But the righteous shall hold on. The righteous will not allow themselves to be misled from the path of rectitude by these moral wrongs which they see prevail in God's rule of the world, they will cling in spite of them to their righteous life. Nay such obscurities and wrongs will but make the joy which they possess in righteousness the dearer and deeper, and instead of faltering they will be (rather, will wax) stronger and stronger. Though Job speaks here in the name of the "righteous" and "clean of hands" it is his own sentiments and resolution that he gives expression to, and the passage is perhaps the most surprising and lofty in the Book. In ch. Job 19:25 Job, conscious of his innocence and assured by his heart that he is a God-fearing man, is enabled to reach out his hand to grasp what must yet in the future be the solution of the riddle of his present life. And, no doubt, a similar thought precedes the present passage (ch. Job 16:18 seq.). It does not appear, however, that this thought is present to his mind here. Rather he is again completely enveloped in the darkness of his present life, the awful problem of which confounds him and all religious men. But no mysteries or wrongs shall make him falter in the way of righteousness. And the human spirit rises to the height of moral grandeur, when it proclaims its resolution to hold on the way of righteousness independently both of men and God.