¹But now those who are younger than me in days laugh at me,

Whose fathers I would have declined to appoint in charge of my sheepdogs.

²Moreover, what use would their strong hands have been to me,

Considering they lacked maturity?

³Through want and hunger they were unproductive;

They were gnawing scraps in a drought-plagued land

Which was in former time desolate and desolated.

⁴They would pluck mallow among the shrubs,

And their food was the root of broom.

⁵They were driven out of the community;

People sounded an alarm at them as at a thief,

⁶So that they lived in dangerous gullies

– In holes in the ground and in rocks.

⁷They brayed among the shrubs;

They gathered together under the thorn bushes.

⁸They are the sons of the foolish

– Verily, the sons of those of no repute.

They were forcibly driven from the land.

⁹And now I have become their song,

And I have become their byword.

¹⁰They abhor me;

They keep their distance from me,

And they do not refrain from spitting in my face.

¹¹For he has loosed my cord and oppressed me,

And they have behaved in an unbridled way towards me.

¹²On the right, a rabble rises up;

They trip up my feet

And set up against me their destructive ways.

¹³They ravage my path,

They take advantage of my plight;

They do it gratuitously.

¹⁴As through a wide breach they come;

Accompanied by destruction, they roll on.

¹⁵Terrors are turned on me,

Which pursue my dignity like the wind,

And my salvation has passed away like a cloud.

¹⁶And now my heart is poured out on me;

Days of affliction have taken their hold on me.

¹⁷At night my bones give me shooting pain;

My gnawing nerves do not rest.

¹⁸With great tightness my covering of skin is like a disguise;

Like the collar of my tunic, it girds me.

¹⁹He has cast me into the mire,

And I have become like dust and ashes.”

²⁰“I cry out to you,

But you do not answer me.

I endure the time

For you to attend to me.

²¹You have become fierce to me;

You persecute me with your strong hand.

²²You bear me away,

You cause me to ride on the wind;

You dissolve my wealth.

²³For I know that you will return me to death,

And to the house appointed for all the living.”

²⁴“But he does not stretch out his hand to a mound of stones,

Even at their cry in one's demise.

²⁵I most certainly wept for him who was in difficult times;

My inner being mourned for the needy.

²⁶For I waited for good,

But evil came,

And I expected light,

But thick darkness arrived.

²⁷My inward parts are agitated,

And they will not be silent;

The days of affliction are in front of me.

²⁸I go about downcast,

With no bright spirit.

I stand,

And in the convocation I cry for help.

²⁹I have become a brother to jackals,

And a neighbour to ostriches.

³⁰My skin has turned black on me,

And my bones burn as from dry heat.

³¹And my harp has become a lamentation,

And my flute the sound of those weeping.