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.
[2] What could I gain from the strength of their hands,
men whose vigor is gone?
[3] Through want and hard hunger
they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;
[4] they 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.
[6] In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell,
in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
[7] Among the bushes they bray;
under the nettles they huddle together.
[8] A 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.
[10] They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.
[11] Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,
they have cast off restraint in my presence.
[12] On my right hand the rabble rise;
they push away my feet;
they cast up against me their ways of destruction.
[13] They break up my path;
they promote my calamity;
they need no one to help 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 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 not I 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 inward parts are in turmoil and never still;
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 heat.
[31] My lyre is turned to mourning,
and my pipe to the voice of those who weep. (ESV)
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