Job 30:1-15

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

30 “But now they make sport of me,
    those who are younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
    to set with the dogs of my flock.^(A)
2 What could I gain from the strength of their hands?
    All their vigor is gone.
³ Through want and hard hunger
    they gnaw the dry and desolate ground;
⁴ they pick mallow and the leaves of bushes
    and to warm themselves the roots of broom.
⁵ They are driven out from society;
    people shout after them as after a thief.
⁶ In the gullies of wadis they must live,
    in holes in the ground and in the rocks.
⁷ Among the bushes they bray;
    under the nettles they huddle together.
⁸ A senseless, disreputable brood,
    they have been whipped out of the land.

⁹ “And now they mock me in song;
    I am a byword to them.^(B)
10 They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
    they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.^(C)
11 Because God has loosed my bowstring and humbled me,
    they have cast off restraint in my presence.^(D)
12 On my right hand the rabble rise up;
    they send me sprawling
    and build roads for my ruin.^(E)
13 They break up my path;
    they promote my calamity;
    no one restrains^[a] 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.^(F)