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whose fathers I would have refused
to put among my sheep dogs.
2 What use was the strength of their hands to me?
Their vigour had left them.
3 Gaunt from poverty and famine,
they gnawed the dry ground,
the desolate wastelands at night.
4 They plucked mallows from among the bushes,
and roots of the broom tree were their food.
5 They were driven out from among their fellow men,
people shouted after them as after a thief.
6They lived in dry stream beds,
in holes in the ground and among the rocks.
7 They brayed among the bushes;
they huddled together under the nettles.
8 A foolish, base, and nameless brood of men,
they have been driven from the land.
9 “Now I am mocked in their songs;
I have become a byword to them.
10 They abhor me, they keep far from me;
they do not hesitate to spit in my face.
11 Because God has loosened His bowstring and afflicted me,
they throw off restraint in my presence.
12 On my right hand the rabble rise up;
they snare my feet,
and raise up their siegeworks of destruction against me.
13 They break up my path;
they promote my calamity,
and they have no one to restrain them.
14 They advance against me as through a gaping breach,
amid the desolation they come rolling in.
15 Terrors overwhelm me;
they pursue my honour as the wind,
and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.
16 “Now my life empties out within me;
days of affliction have seized upon me.
17 In the night my bones are pierced within me,
and my gnawing pains never cease.
18 By great force my garment is disfigured;
it binds around me like the colour of my coat.
19 God has cast me into the mud,
and I have become like dust and ashes.”
20 “I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer me;
I stand up, but You do not regard me.
21 You have become cruel to me;
with the might of Your hand You harass me.
22 You lift me up on the wind, and make me ride it,
You scatter me in the storm.
23 For I know You will lead me down to death,
to the place appointed for all the living.”
24 “Surely no one lays his hands on a broken man,
when he cries out for help in his disaster.
25 Have I not wept for those in trouble?
Was not my soul grieved for the poor?
26 But when I looked for good, evil came to me;
and when I waited for the light, then darkness came.
27 I am churning inwardly without rest;
the days of affliction confront me.
28 I go about mourning without the sun;
I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
29 I am a brother to jackals,
and a companion to ostriches.
30 My skin turns black and falls off me,
and my bones burn with fever.
31 My harp is used for mourning,
and my flute to accompany those who weep.”