“But now those younger than I alaugh at me,
Whose fathers I rejected even to put with the dogs of my flock.
2 Indeed, what good was the strength of their hands to me?
Vigor had perished from them.
3 From want and famine they are gaunt,
Who gnaw the dry ground by night in destruction and desolation,
4 Who pluck mallow by the bushes,
And whose food is the root of the broom tree.
5 They are driven from the community;
They shout against them as against a thief,
6 So that they dwell in the slopes of the valleys,
In holes of the dust and of the rocks.
7 Among the bushes they cry out;
Under the nettles they are gathered together.
8 Wicked fools, even those without a name,
They were scourged from the land.
9 “And now I have become their mocking asong;
I have even become a btaunting word to them.
10 They abhor me and keep a distance from me,
And they do not hold back from aspitting at my face.
11 Because He has loosed His bowstring and aafflicted me,
They have thrust aside btheir bridle before me.
12 On the right hand their brood arises;
They athrust aside my feet band build up against me their ways to disaster.
13 They abreak up my path;
They profit from my destruction;
They have no helper.
14 As through a wide breach they come,
Amid the storm they roll on.
15 aTerrors are turned against me;
They pursue my nobility as the wind,
And my hope for salvation has passed away blike a cloud.
16 “And now amy soul is poured out within me;
Days of affliction have seized me.
17 At night it pierces amy bones within me,
And my gnawing pains take no rest.
18 By a great force my garment is adistorted;
It seizes me about as the collar of my tunic.
19 He has cast me into the amire,
And I have become like dust and ashes.
20 I acry out to You for help, but You do not answer me;
I stand up, and You carefully consider how to be against me.
21 You have become cruel to me;
With the might of Your hand You ahunted me down.
22 You alift me up to the wind and cause me to ride;
And You melt me away in a storm.
23 For I know that You awill bring me to death
And to the bhouse of meeting for all living.
24 “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand,
Or, in his upheaval, is there a acry for help because of them?
25 Have I not awept for the one whose life is hard?
Was not my soul grieved for bthe needy?
26 When I ahoped for good, then evil came;
When I waited for light, bthen thick darkness came.
27 I am boiling awithin and cannot be silent;
Days of affliction confront me.
28 I go about adarkened but not by the sun;
I stand up in the assembly and bcry out for help.
29 I have become a brother to ajackals
And a companion of ostriches.
30 My askin turns black on me,
And my bbones burn with fever.
31 Therefore my aharp is turned to mourning,
And my flute to the sound of those who weep.