Job30

¹“But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.

²Of what use was the strength of their hands to me, since their vigor had gone from them?

³Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed the parched land in desolate wastelands at night.

⁴In the brush they gathered salt herbs, and their food was the root of the broom bush.

⁵They were banished from human society, shouted at as if they were thieves.

⁶They were forced to live in the dry stream beds, among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

⁷They brayed among the bushes and huddled in the undergrowth.

⁸A base and nameless brood, they were driven out of the land.

⁹“And now those young men mock me in song; I have become a byword among them.

¹⁰They detest me and keep their distance; they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they throw off restraint in my presence.

¹²On my right the tribe attacks; they lay snares for my feet, they build their siege ramps against me.

¹³They break up my road; they succeed in destroying me. ‘No one can help him,’ they say.

¹⁴They advance as through a gaping breach; amid the ruins they come rolling in.

¹⁵Terrors overwhelm me; my dignity is driven away as by the wind, my safety vanishes like a cloud.

¹⁶“And now my life ebbs away; days of suffering grip me.

¹⁷Night pierces my bones; my gnawing pains never rest.

¹⁸In his great power God becomes like clothing to me; he binds me like the neck of my garment.

¹⁹He throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

²⁰“I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.

²¹You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me.

²²You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm.

²³I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.

²⁴“Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man when he cries for help in his distress.

²⁵Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor?

²⁶Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.

²⁷The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me.

²⁸I go about blackened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.

²⁹I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls.

³⁰My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever.

³¹My lyre is tuned to mourning, and my pipe to the sound of wailing.