Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

30. Job Continues Discourse

¹ “But now they mock me,
   men younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
   to put with my sheep dogs.
² Of what use was the strength of their hands to me,
   since their vigor had gone from them?
³ Haggard from want and hunger,
   they roamed Or gnawed the parched land
   in desolate wastelands at night.
⁴ In the brush they gathered salt herbs,
   and their food Or fuel was the root of the broom bush.
⁵ They were banished from human society,
   shouted at as if they were thieves.
⁶ They were forced to live in the dry stream beds,
   among the rocks and in holes in the ground.
⁷ They brayed among the bushes
   and huddled in the undergrowth.
⁸ A base and nameless brood,
   they were driven out of the land.

    ⁹ “And now those young men mock me in song;
   I have become a byword among them.
¹⁰ They detest me and keep their distance;
   they do not hesitate to spit in my face.
¹¹ Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me,
   they throw off restraint in my presence.
¹² On my right the tribe The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. attacks;
   they lay snares for my feet,
   they build their siege ramps against me.
¹³ They break up my road;
   they succeed in destroying me.
   ‘No one can help him,’ they say.
¹⁴ They advance as through a gaping breach;
   amid the ruins they come rolling in.
¹⁵ Terrors overwhelm me;
   my dignity is driven away as by the wind,
   my safety vanishes like a cloud.

    ¹⁶ “And now my life ebbs away;
   days of suffering grip me.
¹⁷ Night pierces my bones;
   my gnawing pains never rest.
¹⁸ In his great power God becomes like clothing to me Hebrew; Septuagint power he grasps my clothing;
   he binds me like the neck of my garment.
¹⁹ He throws me into the mud,
   and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

    ²⁰ “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;
   I stand up, but you merely look at me.
²¹ You turn on me ruthlessly;
   with the might of your hand you attack me.
²² You snatch me up and drive me before the wind;
   you toss me about in the storm.
²³ I know you will bring me down to death,
   to the place appointed for all the living.

    ²⁴ “Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man
   when he cries for help in his distress.
²⁵ Have I not wept for those in trouble?
   Has not my soul grieved for the poor?
²⁶ Yet when I hoped for good, evil came;
   when I looked for light, then came darkness.
²⁷ The churning inside me never stops;
   days of suffering 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 owls.
³⁰ My skin grows black and peels;
   my body burns with fever.
³¹ My lyre is tuned to mourning,
   and my pipe to the sound of wailing.