Job 30 · Clearspring

Job’s Honor Turned to Contempt

¹“But now they mock me, men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheep dogs.+ ²What use to me was the strength of their hands, since their vigor had left them?+ ³Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.+ ⁴They plucked mallow among the shrubs, and the roots of the broom tree were their food.+ ⁵They were banished from among men, shouted at like thieves,+ ⁶so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis, among the rocks and in holes in the ground.+ ⁷They cried out among the shrubs and huddled beneath the nettles.+ ⁸A senseless and nameless brood, they were driven off the land.+ ⁹And now they mock me in song; I have become a byword among them.+ ¹⁰They abhor me and keep far from me; they do not hesitate to spit in my face.+ ¹¹Because God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they have cast off restraint in my presence.+ ¹²The rabble arises at my right; they lay snares for my feet and build siege ramps against me.+ ¹³They tear up my path; they profit from my destruction, with no one to restrain them.+ ¹⁴They advance as through a wide breach; through the ruins they keep rolling in.+

Job’s Prosperity Becomes Calamity

¹⁵Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.+ ¹⁶And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction grip me.+ ¹⁷Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest.+ ¹⁸With great force He grasps my garment; He seizes me by the collar of my tunic.+ ¹⁹He throws me into the mud, and I have become like dust and ashes.+ ²⁰I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer; when I stand up, You merely look at me.+ ²¹You have ruthlessly turned on me; You oppose me with Your strong hand.+ ²²You snatch me up into the wind and drive me before it; You toss me about in the storm.+ ²³Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.+ ²⁴Yet no one stretches out his hand against a ruined man when he cries for help in his distress.+ ²⁵Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has my soul not grieved for the needy?+ ²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell.+ ²⁷I am churning within and cannot rest; days of affliction confront me.+ ²⁸I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.+ ²⁹I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.+ ³⁰My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever.+ ³¹My harp is tuned to mourning and my flute to the sound of weeping.’’+

Job’s Honor Turned to Contempt

Job’s Prosperity Becomes Calamity

Study Job 30