Job

¹ Whose fathers I rejected even to put with the dogs of my flock.

² Vigor had perished from them.

³ Who gnaw the dry ground by night in destruction and desolation,

⁴ And whose food is the root of the broom tree.

⁵ They shout against them as against a thief,

⁶ In holes of the dust and of the rocks.

⁷ Under the nettles they are gathered together.

⁸ They were scourged from the land.

⁹ I have even become a taunting word to them.

¹⁰ And they do not hold back from spitting at my face.

¹¹ They have thrust aside their bridle before me.

¹² They thrust aside my feet and build up against me their ways to disaster.

¹³ They profit from my destruction; They have no helper.

¹⁴ Amid the storm they roll on.

¹⁵ They pursue my nobility as the wind, And my hope for salvation has passed away like a cloud.

¹⁶ Days of affliction have seized me.

¹⁷ And my gnawing pains take no rest.

¹⁸ It seizes me about as the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹ And I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰ I stand up, and You carefully consider how to be against me.

²¹ With the might of Your hand You hunted me down.

²² And You melt me away in a storm.

²³ And to the house of meeting for all living.

²⁴ Or, in his upheaval, is there a cry for help because of them?

²⁵ Was not my soul grieved for the needy?

²⁶ When I waited for light, then thick darkness came.

²⁷ Days of affliction confront me.

²⁸ I stand up in the assembly and cry out for help.

²⁹ And a companion of ostriches.

³⁰ And my bones burn with fever.

³¹ And my flute to the sound of those who weep.