Chapter 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 entrust with my sheep dogs.

²What use to me was the strength of their hands,

since their vigor had left them?

³Gaunt from poverty and hunger,

they gnawed the dry land,

and the desolate wasteland by night.

⁴They plucked mallow among the shrubs,

and the roots of the broom tree were their food.^a

⁵They were banished from among men,

shouted down like thieves,

⁶so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis,

among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

⁷They cried out among the shrubs

and huddled beneath the nettles.

⁸A senseless and nameless brood,

they were driven off the land.

⁹And now they mock me in song;

I have become a byword among them.

¹⁰They abhor me and keep far from me;

they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹Because God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me,

they have cast off restraint^b in my presence.

¹²The rabble arises at my right;

they lay snares for my feet

and build siege ramps against me.

¹³They tear up my path;

they profit from my destruction,

with no one to restrain them.^c

¹⁴They advance as through a wide breach;

through the ruins they keep rolling in.

Job’s Prosperity Becomes Calamity

¹⁵Terrors are turned loose against me;

they drive away my dignity as by the wind,

and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.

¹⁶And now my soul is poured out within me;

days of affliction grip me.

¹⁷Night pierces my bones,

and my gnawing pains never rest.

¹⁸With great force He grasps my garment;^d

He seizes me by the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹He throws me into the mud,

and I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer;

when I stand up, You merely look at me.

²¹You have ruthlessly turned on me;

You oppose me with Your strong hand.

²²You snatch me up into the wind

and drive me before it;

You toss me about^e in the storm.

²³Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death,

to the place appointed for all the living.

²⁴Yet no one stretches out his hand to a ruined man

when he cries for help in his distress.

²⁵Have I not wept for those in trouble?

Has my soul not grieved for the needy?

²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came;

when I looked for light, darkness fell.

²⁷I am churning within and cannot rest;

days of affliction confront me.

²⁸I go about blackened, but not by the sun.

I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.

²⁹I have become a brother of jackals,^f

a companion of ostriches.^g

³⁰My skin grows black and peels,

and my bones burn with fever.

³¹My harp is tuned to mourning

and my flute to the sound of weeping.