en_cjb - Job 30 - Ozzuu Bible

¹ “But now those younger than I hold me in derision, men whose fathers I wouldn’t even have put with the dogs that guarded my sheep.

² What use to me was the strength in their hands? All their vigor had left them.

³ Worn out by want and hunger, they gnaw the dry ground in the gloom of waste and desolation.

⁴ They pluck saltwort and bitter leaves; these, with broom tree roots, are their food.

⁵ They are driven away from society, with men shouting after them as after a thief,

⁶ to live in gullies and vadis, in holes in the ground and caves in the rocks.

⁷ Among the bushes they howl like beasts and huddle among the nettles,

⁸ irresponsible nobodies driven from the land.

⁹ “Now I have become their song; yes, I am a byword with them.

¹⁰ They loathe me, they stand aloof from me; they don’t hesitate to spit in my face!

¹¹ For God has loosened my bowstring and humbled me; they throw off restraint in my presence.

¹² At my right the street urchins attack, pushing me from place to place, besieging me with their ways of destruction,

¹³ breaking up my path, furthering my calamity — even those who have no one to help them.

¹⁴ They move in as through a wide gap; amid the ruin they roll on in waves.

¹⁵ Terrors tumble over me, chasing my honor away like the wind; my [hope of] salvation passes like a cloud.

¹⁶ “So now my life is ebbing away, days of grief have seized me.

¹⁷ At night pain pierces me to the bone, so that I never rest.

¹⁸ My clothes are disfigured by the force [of my disease]; they choke me like the collar of my coat.

¹⁹ [God] has thrown me into the mud; I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰ “I call out to you [God], but you don’t answer me; I stand up to plead, but you just look at me.

²¹ You have turned cruelly against me; with your powerful hand you keep persecuting me.

²² You snatch me up on the wind and make me ride it; you toss me about in the tempest.

²³ For I know that you will bring me to death, the house assigned to everyone living.

²⁴ “Surely [God] wouldn’t strike at a ruin, if in one’s calamity one cried out to him for help.

²⁵ Didn’t I weep for those who were in trouble? Didn’t I grieve for the needy?

²⁶ Yet when I hoped for good, what came was bad; when I expected light, what came was darkness.

²⁷ My insides are in turmoil; they can’t find rest; days of misery confront me.

²⁸ I go about in sunless gloom, I rise in the assembly and cry for help.

²⁹ I have become a brother to jackals and a companion of ostriches.

³⁰ My skin is black and falling off me, and my bones are burning with heat.

³¹ So my lyre is tuned for mourning, my pipe to the voice of those who weep.