Job 30

¹“But now they laugh at me,

men who are younger than I,

whose fathers I would have disdained

to set with the dogs of my flock.

²What could I gain from the strength of their hands,

men whose vigor is gone?

³Through want and hard hunger

they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;

⁴they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes,

and the roots of the broom tree for their food.

⁵They are driven out from human company;

they shout after them as after a thief.

⁶In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell,

in holes of the earth and of the rocks.

⁷Among the bushes they bray;

under the nettles they huddle together.

⁸A senseless, a nameless brood,

they have been whipped out of the land.

⁹“And now I have become their song;

I am a byword to them.

¹⁰They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;

they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.

¹¹Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,

they have cast off restraint in my presence.

¹²On my right hand the rabble rise;

they push away my feet;

they cast up against me their ways of destruction.

¹³They break up my path;

they promote my calamity;

they need no one to help them.

¹⁴As through a wide breach they come;

amid the crash they roll on.

¹⁵Terrors are turned upon me;

my honor is pursued as by the wind,

and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.

¹⁶“And now my soul is poured out within me;

days of affliction have taken hold of me.

¹⁷The night racks my bones,

and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.

¹⁸With great force my garment is disfigured;

it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹God has cast me into the mire,

and I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;

I stand, and you only look at me.

²¹You have turned cruel to me;

with the might of your hand you persecute me.

²²You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it,

and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.

²³For I know that you will bring me to death

and to the house appointed for all living.

²⁴“Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand,

and in his disaster cry for help?

²⁵Did not I weep for him whose day was hard?

Was not my soul grieved for the needy?

²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came,

and when I waited for light, darkness came.

²⁷My inward parts are in turmoil and never still;

days of affliction come to meet me.

²⁸I go about darkened, but not by the sun;

I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.

²⁹I am a brother of jackals

and a companion of ostriches.

³⁰My skin turns black and falls from me,

and my bones burn with heat.

³¹My lyre is turned to mourning,

and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.