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.

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 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.

14They advance as through a wide breach;

through the ruins they keep rolling in.