Job 30:1-15

Revised Standard Version

30 “But now they make sport of 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 and desolate ground;^[a]
4 they pick mallow and the leaves of bushes,
    and to warm themselves the roots of the broom.
⁵ They are driven out from among men;
    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 disreputable 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 drive me^[b] forth,
    they cast up against me their ways of destruction.
¹³ They break up my path,
    they promote my calamity;
    no one restrains^[c] them.
¹⁴ As through^[d] 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.