¹"But now they laugh at me, men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.

²What could I gain from the strength of their hands, men whose vigor is gone?

³Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;

⁴they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes, and the roots of the broom tree for their food.

⁵They are driven out from human company; they shout after them as after a thief.

⁶In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell, in holes of the earth and of the rocks.

⁷Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together.

⁸A senseless, a nameless brood, they have been whipped out of the land.

⁹"And now I have become their song; I am a byword to them.

¹⁰They abhor me; they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.

¹¹Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off restraint in my presence.

¹²On my right hand the rabble rise; they push away my feet; they cast up against me their ways of destruction.

¹³They break up my path; they promote my calamity; they need no one to help them.

¹⁴As through a wide breach they come; amid the crash they roll on.

¹⁵Terrors are turned upon me; my honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.

¹⁶"And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me.

¹⁷The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.

¹⁸With great force my garment is disfigured; it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.

¹⁹God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.

²¹You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me.

²²You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.

²³For I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living.

²⁴"Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and in his disaster cry for help?

²⁵Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy?

²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came.

²⁷My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me.

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

²⁹I am a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches.

³⁰My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat.

³¹My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.