Job 30

But now those younger than I mock me, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with the dogs of my flock. What use to me was the strength of their hands?
Their vigor had perished. Gaunt with want and hunger, they gnaw dry ground in the gloom of waste and desolation. They pluck salt plants by the bushes, and broom roots are their food. They are driven from the community;
people shout at them as at a thief, to dwell in the ravines of the streams, in holes of the earth and among rocks. They bray among the bushes and huddle under the nettles. Sons of fools, sons of the nameless, they are whipped from the land. And now I have become their song;
I am a byword to them. They abhor me and keep far from me;
they do not refrain from spitting in my face. For he has loosened my cord and afflicted me;
they have cast off the bridle in my presence. At my right the rabble rises;
they thrust my feet aside and build their paths of destruction against me. They tear up my path and further my ruin, with no one to help them. They come as through a wide breach;
amid the ruins they roll in. Terrors are turned upon me;
they pursue my honor like the wind, and my deliverance passes away like a cloud. And now my soul pours itself out within me;
days of affliction seize me. At night my bones are gouged from me;
my gnawing pains do not sleep. With great force my garment is distorted;
it binds me like the neck of my tunic. He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes. I cry to you, but you do not answer me;
I stand, and you look at me. You have turned cruel to me;
with the strength of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up to the wind and make me ride it;
you melt me away in the storm. For I know that you will bring me to death, to the house appointed for every living thing. Yet does not one stretch out a hand amid ruin, when in his calamity he cries to them for help? Have I not wept for the one whose day was hard?
Has my soul not grieved for the needy? When I hoped for good, evil came;
when I waited for light, deep gloom came. My inward parts boil without rest;
days of affliction confront me. I walk about blackened, but not by the sun;
I stand in the assembly and cry for help. I have become a brother to jackals and a companion of ostriches. My skin darkens upon me, and my bones burn with heat. My lyre has turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

Rights and attribution