BSB JOB Chapter 30

Job’s Honor Turned to Contempt

30 [ “] But now they mock me men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheep dogs.

2 What use to me was the strength of their hands, since their vigor had left them?

3 Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.

4 They plucked mallow among the shrubs, and the roots of the broom tree were their food.[fn]

5 They were banished from among [men], shouted at like thieves,

6 so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis, among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

7 They cried out among the shrubs and huddled beneath the nettles.

8 A senseless and nameless brood, they were driven off the land.

9 And now they mock me in song; I have become a byword among them.

10 They abhor me and keep far from me; they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

11 Because God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they have cast off restraint[fn] in my presence.

12 The rabble arises at my right; they lay snares for my feet and build siege ramps against me.

13 They tear up my path; they profit from my destruction, with no one to restrain them.[fn]

14 They advance as through a wide breach; through the ruins they keep rolling in.

Job’s Prosperity Becomes Calamity

15 Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.

16 And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction grip me.

17 Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest.

18 With great force He grasps my garment;[fn] He seizes me by the collar of my tunic.

19 He throws me into the mud, and I have become like dust and ashes.

20 I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer; when I stand up, You merely look at me.

21 You have ruthlessly turned on me; You oppose me with Your strong hand.

22 You snatch me up into the wind and drive me [before it]; You toss me about[fn] in the storm.

23 Yes, I know that You will bring me down [to] death, to the place appointed for all the living.

24 Yet no one stretches out his hand against a ruined man when he cries for help in his distress

25 Have I not wept for those in trouble Has my soul not grieved for the needy?

26 But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell.

27 I am churning within and cannot rest; days of affliction confront me.

28 I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.

29 I have become a brother of jackals,[fn] a companion of ostriches.[fn]

30 My skin grows black and peels and my bones burn with fever.

31 My harp is tuned to mourning and my flute to the sound of weeping.[’’]