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¹ “But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.

² Of what use was the strength of their hands to me, since their vigor had gone from them?

³ Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed Or gnawed the parched land in desolate wastelands at night.

⁴ In the brush they gathered salt herbs, and their food Or fuel was the root of the broom bush.

⁵ They were banished from human society, shouted at as if they were thieves.

⁶ They were forced to live in the dry stream beds, among the rocks and in holes in the ground.

⁷ They brayed among the bushes and huddled in the undergrowth.

⁸ A base and nameless brood, they were driven out of the land.

⁹ “And now those young men mock me in song; I have become a byword among them.

¹⁰ They detest me and keep their distance; they do not hesitate to spit in my face.

¹¹ Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they throw off restraint in my presence.

¹² On my right the tribe The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. attacks; they lay snares for my feet, they build their siege ramps against me.

¹³ They break up my road; they succeed in destroying me. ‘No one can help him,’ they say.

¹⁴ They advance as through a gaping breach; amid the ruins they come rolling in.

¹⁵ Terrors overwhelm me; my dignity is driven away as by the wind, my safety vanishes like a cloud.

¹⁶ “And now my life ebbs away; days of suffering grip me.

¹⁷ Night pierces my bones; my gnawing pains never rest.

¹⁸ In his great power God becomes like clothing to me Hebrew; Septuagint power he grasps my clothing ; he binds me like the neck of my garment.

¹⁹ He throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

²⁰ “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.

²¹ You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me.

²² You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm.

²³ I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.

²⁴ “Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man when he cries for help in his distress.

²⁵ Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor?

²⁶ Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.

²⁷ The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me.

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

²⁹ I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls.

³⁰ My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever. ³¹ My lyre is tuned to mourning, and my pipe to the sound of wailing.