Job 30
Job’s Present State Is Humiliating
1“But now those younger than I mock me,
Whose fathers I disdained to put with the dogs of my flock.
2Indeed, what good was the strength of their hands to me?
Vigor had perished from them.
3From want and famine they are gaunt
Who gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation,
4Who pluck mallow by the bushes,
And whose food is the root of the broom shrub.
5They are driven from the community;
They shout against them as against a thief,
6So that they dwell in dreadful valleys,
In holes of the earth and of the rocks.
7Among the bushes they cry out;
Under the nettles they are gathered together.
8Fools, even those without a name,
They were scourged from the land.
9“And now I have become their taunt,
I have even become a byword to them.
10They abhor me and stand aloof from me,
And they do not refrain from spitting at my face.
11Because He has loosed His bowstring and afflicted me,
They have cast off the bridle before me.
12On the right hand their brood arises;
They thrust aside my feet and build up against me their ways of destruction.
13They break up my path,
They profit from my destruction;
No one restrains them.
14As through a wide breach they come,
Amid the tempest they roll on.
15Terrors are turned against me;
They pursue my honor as the wind,
And my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.
16“And now my soul is poured out within me;
Days of affliction have seized me.
17At night it pierces my bones within me,
And my gnawing pains take no rest.
18By a great force my garment is distorted;
It binds me about as the collar of my coat.
19He has cast me into the mire,
And I have become like dust and ashes.
20I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer me;
I stand up, and You turn Your attention against me.
21You have become cruel to me;
With the might of Your hand You persecute me.
22You lift me up to the wind and cause me to ride;
And You dissolve me in a storm.
23For I know that You will bring me to death
And to the house of meeting for all living.
24“Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand,
Or in his disaster therefore cry out for help?
25Have I not wept for the one whose life is hard?
Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
26When I expected good, then evil came;
When I waited for light, then darkness came.
27I am seething within and cannot relax;
Days of affliction confront me.
28I go about mourning without comfort;
I stand up in the assembly and cry out for help.
29I have become a brother to jackals
And a companion of ostriches.
30My skin turns black on me,
And my bones burn with fever.
31Therefore my harp is turned to mourning,
And my flute to the sound of those who weep.