Job’s Honor Turned to Contempt

¹ “But now they mock me,

men younger than I am,

whose fathers I would have refused

to put with my sheep dogs.^*

² What use to me was the strength of their hands,

since their vigor had left them?

³ Gaunt from poverty and hunger,

they gnawed the dry land,

and the desolate wasteland by night.

⁴ They plucked mallow among the shrubs,

and the roots of the broom tree were their food.

⁵ They were banished from among men,

shouted^* at like thieves,

⁶ so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis,

among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

⁷ They cried out among the shrubs

and huddled beneath the nettles.

⁸ A senseless and nameless brood,

they were driven off the land.

⁹ And now they mock me in song;

I have become a byword^* among them.

¹⁰ They abhor me and keep far from me;

they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹ Because God has unstrung my bow^* and afflicted me,

they have cast off restraint in my presence.

¹² The rabble arises at my right;

they lay snares for my feet

and build siege ramps against me.

¹³ They tear up my path;

they profit from my destruction,

with no one to restrain them.

¹⁴ They advance as through a wide breach;

through the ruins they keep rolling in.

Job’s Prosperity Becomes Calamity

¹⁵ Terrors are turned loose against me;

they drive away^* my dignity as by the wind,

and my prosperity^* has passed like a cloud.

¹⁶ And now my soul is poured out within me;

days of affliction grip me.

¹⁷ Night pierces my bones,

and my gnawing pains never rest.

¹⁸ With great force He grasps^* my garment;

He seizes me^* by the collar^* of my tunic.

¹⁹ He throws me into the mud,

and I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰ I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer;

when I stand up, You merely look at me.

²¹ You have ruthlessly turned on me;

You oppose me with Your strong hand.

²² You snatch me up into the wind

and drive me before it;

You toss me about in the storm.

²³ Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death,

to the place appointed^* for all the living.

²⁴ Yet no one stretches out his hand against a ruined man

when he cries for help in his distress.

²⁵ Have I not wept for those in trouble?

Has my soul not grieved for the needy?

²⁶ But when I hoped for good, evil came;

when I looked for light, darkness fell.

²⁷ I am churning within and cannot rest;

days of affliction confront me.

²⁸ I go about blackened, but not by the sun.

I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.

²⁹ I have become a brother of jackals,

a companion of ostriches.

³⁰ My skin grows black and peels,

and my bones burn with fever.

³¹ My harp is tuned to mourning

and my flute to the sound of weeping.