Chapter 30

¹“But now those who are younger than I, have me in derision,

Whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.

²Of what use is the strength of their hands to me,

Men in whom ripe age has perished?

³They are gaunt from lack and famine.

They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation.

⁴They pluck salt herbs by the bushes.

The roots of the broom are their food.

⁵They are driven forth from the midst of men;

They cry after them as after a thief;

⁶So that they dwell in frightful valleys,

And in holes of the earth and of the rocks.

⁷Among the bushes they bray;

And under the nettles they are gathered together.

⁸They are children of fools, yes, children of base men.

They were flogged out of the land.

⁹“Now I have become their song.

Yes, I am a byword to them.

¹⁰They abhor me, they stand aloof from me,

And don’t hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹For he has untied his cord, and afflicted me;

And they have thrown off restraint before me.

¹²On my right hand rise the rabble.

They thrust aside my feet,

They cast up against me their ways of destruction.

¹³They mar my path,

They set forward my calamity,

Without anyone’s help.

¹⁴As through a wide breach they come,

In the midst of the ruin they roll themselves in.

¹⁵Terrors are turned on me.

They chase my honor as the wind.

My welfare has passed away as a cloud.

¹⁶“Now my soul is poured out within me.

Days of affliction have taken hold on me.

¹⁷In the night season my bones are pierced in me,

And the pains that gnaw me take no rest.

¹⁸By great force is my garment disfigured.

It binds me about as the collar of my coat.

¹⁹He has cast me into the mire.

I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰I cry to you, and you do not answer me.

I stand up, and you gaze at me.

²¹You have turned to be cruel to me.

With the might of your hand you persecute me.

²²You lift me up to the wind, and drive me with it.

You dissolve me in the storm.

²³For I know that you will bring me to death,

To the house appointed for all living.

²⁴“However doesn’t one stretch out a hand in his fall?

Or in his calamity therefore cry for help?

²⁵Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble?

Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy?

²⁶When I looked for good, then evil came;

When I waited for light, there came darkness.

²⁷My heart is troubled, and doesn’t rest.

Days of affliction have come on me.

²⁸I go mourning without the sun.

I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help.

²⁹I am a brother to jackals,

And a companion to ostriches.

³⁰My skin grows black and peels from me.

My bones are burned with heat.

³¹Therefore is my harp turned to mourning,

And my pipe into the voice of those who weep.