Job 30:1–15

Job’s Final Defense Continued

30 “But now those younger than I, as far as days, laugh at me,

whose fathers I rejected for setting with the dogs of my sheep and goats.

2 Moreover, ⌊what use to me is the strength of their hands⌋?a

With them, vigor is destroyed.

3 Through want and through barren hunger

they are gnawing in the dry region in the darkness of desolation and waste.

4 They are picking salt herbs, the leaves of bushes,

and the roots of broom trees to warm themselves.

5 They were driven out from fellow people;

they shout at them as at ab thief,

6 ⌊so that they dwell⌋c

in holes of the ground and in the rocks.

7 They bray among the bushes;

they are gathered under the nettles.

8 ⌊A senseless crowd⌋,d yes, ⌊a disreputable brood⌋,e

they were cast out from the land.

9 “But now I am their mocking song,

and I have become a byword for them.

10 They abhor me; they keep aloof from me,

and they do not withhold spit from my face

11 because he has loosened his bowstring and humbled me,

and they have thrown off restraint ⌊in my presence⌋.f

12 On the right hand the brood risesg up;

⌊they put me to flight⌋,h

and they build up their ⌊siege ramps⌋i against me.

13 They destroy my path;

they promote my destruction;

they have no helper.

14 As through a wide breach they come;

amid a crash they rush on.

15 Terrors are turned upon me;

my honor is pursued as by the wind,

and my hope of deliverance passed by like a cloud.