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 the parched land
in desolate wastelands at night.
⁴ In the brush they gathered salt herbs,
and their food 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 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;
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.