Albert Barnes Commentary Job 17:16

"It shall go down to the bars of Sheol, When once there is rest in the dust." — Job 17:16 (ASV)

They will go down - That is, my hopes will go down. All the expectations that I have cherished of life and happiness will descend there with me. We have a similar expression when we say that a man “has buried his hopes in the grave” when he loses an only son.

To the bars of the pit - This refers to the “Bars of Sheol”—in Hebrew, שׁאול בד (transliterated bad sh^e'ôl). The Vulgate translates this as “Profoundest deep,” and the Septuagint as εἰς ᾅδην (transliterated eis hadēn), meaning “to Hades.” Sheol, or Hades, was supposed to be under the earth. Its entrance was by the grave, considered as a gate leading to it. It was protected by bars—as prisons are—so that those who entered there could not escape (see the notes at Isaiah 14:9).

It was a dark, gloomy dwelling, far away from light and from the comforts that people enjoy in this life . To that dark world Job expected soon to descend; and though he did not regard it as properly a place of punishment, it was not a place of positive joy.

It was a gloomy and wretched world—the land of darkness and of the shadow of death; and he looked to the certainty of going there not with joy, but with anguish and distress of heart. Had Job been favored with the clear and elevated views of heaven that we have in the Christian revelation, death to him would have lost its gloom.

We often wonder that so good a man expressed such a dread of death, and that he did not look more calmly into the future world. But to do him justice, we should place ourselves in his situation. We should lay aside all that is cheerful and glad in the views of heaven that Christianity has given us. We should look upon the future world as the shadow of death: a land of gloom and specters, a place beneath the ground—dark, chilly, repulsive—and we will cease to wonder at the expressions of even so good a man at the prospect of death.

When we look at him, we should remember with thankfulness the different views that we have of the future world, and the source to which we owe them. To us, if we are pious in any measure as Job was, death is the avenue, not to a world of gloom, but to a world of light and glory.

It opens into heaven. There is no gloom, no darkness, no sorrow. There all are happy, and there all that is mysterious in this life is made plain—all that is sad is succeeded by eternal joy. These views we owe to that gospel that has brought life and immortality to light.

And when we think of death and the future world, when from the midst of woes and sorrows we are compelled to look out on eternity, let us rejoice that we are not constrained to look forward with the sad forebodings of the Sage of Uz, but that we may think of the grave cheered by the strong consolations of Christian hope of the glorious resurrection.

When our rest together is in the dust - The rest of me and my hopes. My hopes and I will expire together.