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.