Job’s Reputation

21 “People listened to me and waited silently;

they kept silent for my advice.

22  After I had spoken, they did not respond;

my words fell on them drop by drop.

23  They waited for me as people wait for the rain,

and they opened their mouths

as for the spring rains.

24  If I smiled at them, they hardly believed it;

and they did not cause the light of my face to darken.

25  I chose the way for them

and sat as their chief;

I lived like a king among his troops;

I was like one who comforts mourners.

30 “But now they mock me, those who are younger than I,

whose fathers I disdained too much

to put with my sheep dogs.

2  Moreover, the strength of their hands –

what use was it to me?

Men whose strength had perished;

3  gaunt with want and hunger,

they would gnaw the parched land,

in former time desolate and waste.

4  By the brush they would gather herbs from the salt marshes,

and the root of the broom tree was their food.

5  They were banished from the community –

people shouted at them

like they would shout at thieves –

6  so that they had to live

in the dry stream beds,

in the holes of the ground, and among the rocks.

7  They brayed like animals among the bushes

and were huddled together under the nettles.

8  Sons of senseless and nameless people,

they were driven out of the land with whips.