Job

But now those younger laugh at me, whose fathers I would have refused to set with the dogs of my flock.

Also, what [profit] for me [was] the strength of their hands, [for] or full vigor had perished from them?

They are dried up with want and famine; they who gnaw the dry ground, [which was] before waste and ruin,

[those] plucking mallows by the bushes, and broom roots [for] their food.

They are driven forth from the midst; they cried against them as a thief.

[They] dwell in the chasms of the valleys, [in] holes of the earth and [in] rocks.

They bray among the bushes; they huddle together under the nettles;

sons of fools, yea, sons without a name; they have been whipped out of the land.

And now I am their song; yea, I am their byword.

They despise me, and they flee far from me; they do not spare spit from my face.

Because He has loosed His bowstring and afflicted me, they have also thrown off the bridle before me.

On [my] right a brood rises; they push away my feet and raise up against me the ways of their ruin.

They have broken down my path, they gain by my trouble; they have no helper.

As [through] a wide break they came [on]; they roll under a ruin.

Terrors have turned on me; they pursue my soul like the wind; and my good passes away like a cloud.

And now my soul is poured out within me; the days of affliction have taken hold on me.

My bones are pierced in me in the night; and my gnawings never lie down.

By the great force [of my disease] my clothing is exposed; it binds me about like the mouth of my coat.

[He has] cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.

I cried to You, and You did not hear me; I stood up, and You did not consider me.

You changed to [be] cruel to me; with Your mighty hand You assault me.

You lift me up to the wind; You cause me to ride [on it]; and You melt me in a storm.

Surely He will not stretch out [His] hand to the ruin-heap, though they cry in their misfortune.

Did I not weep for him whose day was hard; and my soul grieved for the poor?

When I looked for good, then evil came; and when I waited for light, then darkness came.

My bowels boiled, and did not rest; the days of trouble confront me.

I go in mourning with no sun; I stood up [and] I cried out in the congregation.

I am a brother to jackals, and a companion to daughters of the ostrich.

My skin is black on me, and my bones are burned with heat.

And my lyre has [turned] to mourning, and my flute to the sound of weeping.