JobChapter 30

But now they laugh at me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have refused to put with the dogs of my flock.
What use to me was the strength of their hands? All their vigor had perished.
Gaunt from want and hunger, they gnawed the parched ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation.
They picked saltwort among the bushes, and the roots of the broom tree were their bread.
They were driven out from among people, shouted at as if they were thieves,
forced to live in dry riverbeds, in holes in the ground and among the rocks.
Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they huddled together.
A senseless brood, sons of nobodies, they were whipped out of the land.
And now I am their taunting song; I have become a byword among them.
They loathe me and keep their distance; they do not hold back from spitting in my face.
Because God has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me, they cast off the bridle before me.
On my right the rabble rises up; they trip my feet and throw up their siege ramps against me.
They tear up my path; they further my ruin, and no one need help them.
They come on as through a wide breach; amid the crash they roll in upon me.
Terrors are turned loose against me; my dignity is driven off like the wind, and my deliverance passes by like a cloud.
And now my life is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me.
Night pierces my bones; the pains that gnaw me never rest.
With great force my garment is disfigured; it binds me tight like the collar of my tunic.
He has thrown me into the mud, and I have become like dust and ashes.
I cry out to you, and you do not answer; I stand before you, and you only look at me.
You have turned cruel toward me; with the strength of your hand you assail me.
You lift me up to the wind and make me ride it; you melt me away in the roar of the storm.
For I know you will bring me down to death, to the house appointed for all the living.
Yet surely no one lays a hand on a man in ruins, when in his disaster he cries for help.
Did I not weep for the one whose days were hard? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?
But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I waited for light, darkness fell.
My insides churn and will not be still; days of affliction confront me.
I go about blackened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.
My skin turns black and peels away, and my bones burn with fever.
My lyre is tuned to mourning, and my flute to the sound of weeping.