Job 30

¹“But now they make sport of me,

those 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?

All their vigor is gone.

³Through want and hard hunger

they gnaw the dry and desolate ground,

⁴they pick mallow and the leaves of bushes,

and to warm themselves the roots of broom.

⁵They are driven out from society;

people shout after them as after a thief.

⁶In the gullies of wadis they must live,

in holes in the ground, and in the rocks.

⁷Among the bushes they bray;

under the nettles they huddle together.

⁸A senseless, disreputable brood,

they have been whipped out of the land.

⁹“And now they mock me in 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 bowstring and humbled me,

they have cast off restraint in my presence.

¹²On my right hand the rabble rise up;

they send me sprawling,

and build roads for my ruin.

¹³They break up my path,

they promote my calamity;

no one restrains 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 violence he seizes my garment;

he grasps me by the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹He has cast me into the mire,

and I have become like dust and ashes.

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

I stand, and you merely 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.

²³I know that you will bring me to death,

and to the house appointed for all living.

²⁴“Surely one does not turn against the needy,

when in disaster they cry for help.

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

Was not my soul grieved for the poor?

²⁶But when I looked for good, evil came;

and when I waited for light, darkness came.

²⁷My inward parts are in turmoil, and are never still;

days of affliction come to meet me.

²⁸I go about in sunless gloom;

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.