Job’s Honor Turned to Contempt

[“] 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 vvv nameless brood,

they were driven off the land.

9 

And now vvv 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.

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