Job 30

¹ But now they mock me,
men younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
to set with the dogs of my flock.

² What good was the strength of their hands to me,
men whose vigor was gone?

³ Through want and hard hunger they were gaunt;
they gnawed the dry ground,
desolate and waste.

⁴ They plucked mallow and the leaves of bushes
and made their meal the roots of the broom tree.

⁵ They were driven out from human company;
people shouted after them as after a thief.

⁶ In the gullies of the torrents they had to dwell,
in holes of the earth and in the rocks.

⁷ Among the bushes they brayed;
under the nettles they huddled together.

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

⁹ And now I have become their song;
I am a byword to them.

¹⁰ They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹ Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,
they have cast off restraint in my presence.

¹² On my right the rabble rise;
they push away my feet;
they cast up their siege roads against me.

¹³ They tear up my path;
they promote my disaster;
no one restrains them.

¹⁴ As through a wide breach they come;
amid the crash they roll on.

¹⁵ Terrors 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.

¹⁷ The night racks my bones,
and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.

¹⁸ With great force my garment is disfigured;
it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹ God has cast me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰ I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you only look at me.

²¹ You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.

²² You lift me up on the wind; you make me to ride on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.

²³ For 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?

²⁵ Did I not weep for him whose day was hard?
Was not my soul grieved for the needy?

²⁶ But when I hoped for good, evil came,
and when I waited for light, darkness came.

²⁷ My heart is in turmoil and cannot rest;
days of affliction come to meet me.

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

²⁹ I am a brother of jackals
and a companion of ostriches.

³⁰ My skin turns black and falls from me,
and my bones burn with fever.

³¹ My lyre is turned to mourning,
and my flute to the sound of those who weep.