Job
Job 30
Now the Least of Them Laugh
1 “But now they laugh me down —
the least of them take their turn at correcting me,
men whose fathers I counted as nothing,
whom I did not think worth the dogs that ran with my flocks.
2 And what was the strength of their hands to me?
For them the full term had already perished.
3 In want and hunger, childless,
they were fleeing a waterless land only yesterday,
its hardship and its misery,
4 breaking off saltwort on the echoing shore,
men whose only food was saltwort,
without honor, held cheap, short of every good thing,
who chewed the roots of trees out of great hunger.
5 Thieves rose up against me,
6 whose houses were holes in the rock.
7 They shout out among the echoing places;
they made their living under wild scrub.
8 Sons of fools and of men without honor,
their name and their fame put out from the earth.
9 And now I am their lyre,
and they keep me for a byword.
10 They stood far off and loathed me,
and they did not spare my face their spit.
The Hand That Turned on Me
11 For he opened his quiver and did me harm,
and they threw off the bridle before my face.
12 On the right hand of their brood they rose up;
they stretched out their foot
and made roads over me, the paths of their ruin.
13 My own tracks were rubbed away,
for he stripped off my robe.
14 He shot me down with his arrows;
he has used me as he pleases;
I am kneaded together with pains.
15 My pains keep coming back;
my hope has gone off like a wind,
and my rescue like a cloud.
16 And now my soul will be poured out on me,
and days of pain have hold of me.
17 At night my bones are burned through,
and my sinews are undone.
18 With great force he took hold of my robe;
it closed on me like the collar of my tunic.
19 You have counted me equal to clay;
my share is in earth and ashes.
20 I have cried out to you and you do not hear me;
they stood and stared at me.
21 You came at me without mercy;
with a strong hand you whipped me.
22 You set me among pains
and threw me away from rescue.
23 For I know that death will grind me away;
the earth is the house of every mortal.
24 If only I could lay hands on myself,
or beg another man, and he would do it for me.
My Lyre Turned to Grief
25 But I wept over every helpless man,
and I groaned when I saw a man in hard straits.
26 I was holding out for good things,
and instead days of evils came to meet me.
27 My belly boiled over and will not be quiet;
days of poverty ran ahead and caught me.
28 I have gone about groaning with nothing to muzzle me;
I have stood up in the assembly and cried out.
29 I have become a brother of sirens
and a companion of ostriches.
30 My skin has gone black all over,
and my bones are scorched with heat.
31 My lyre has turned to grief,
and my psalm to weeping.”