Job 30:1–10

¹“But now they mock me,

men younger than I am,

whose fathers I would have refused

to put with my sheep dogs.

²What use to me was the strength of their hands,

since their vigor had left them?

³Gaunt from poverty and hunger,

they gnawed the dry land,

and the desolate wasteland by night.

⁴They plucked mallow among the shrubs,

and the roots of the broom tree were their food.^a

⁵They were banished from among men,

shouted at like thieves,

⁶so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis,

among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

⁷They cried out among the shrubs

and huddled beneath the nettles.

⁸A senseless and nameless brood,

they were driven off the land.

⁹And now they mock me in song;

I have become a byword among them.

¹⁰They abhor me and keep far from me;

they do not hesitate to spit in my face.