Job 30

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.