Job 30
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.1
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 2 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.3
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;4 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 5 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,6 a companion of ostriches.7
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.