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.

⁵ They 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.

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.

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.

²² You lift me up on the wind; you make me 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?

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.

source