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 entrust 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 down 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 to 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.