Read the Bible

¹ "But now those younger than I
hold me in derision,
men whose fathers I wouldn't even
have put with the dogs that guarded my sheep.
² What use to me was the strength in their hands?
All their vigor had left them.
³ Worn out by want and hunger,
they gnaw the dry ground in the gloom
of waste and desolation.
⁴ They pluck saltwort and bitter leaves;
these, with broom tree roots, are their food.
⁵ They are driven away from society,
with men shouting after them as after a thief,
⁶ to live in gullies and vadis,
in holes in the ground and caves in the rocks.
⁷ Among the bushes they howl like beasts
and huddle among the nettles,
⁸ irresponsible nobodies
driven from the land.

⁹ "Now I have become their song;
yes, I am a byword with them.
¹⁰ They loathe me, they stand aloof from me;
they don't hesitate to spit in my face!
¹¹ For God has loosened my bowstring and humbled me;
they throw off restraint in my presence.
¹² At my right the street urchins attack,
pushing me from place to place,
besieging me with their ways of destruction,
¹³ breaking up my path,
furthering my calamity —
even those who have no one to help them.
¹⁴ They move in as through a wide gap;
amid the ruin they roll on in waves.
¹⁵ Terrors tumble over me,
chasing my honor away like the wind;
my [hope of] salvation passes like a cloud.

¹⁶ "So now my life is ebbing away,
days of grief have seized me.
¹⁷ At night pain pierces me to the bone,
so that I never rest.
¹⁸ My clothes are disfigured by the force [of my disease];
they choke me like the collar of my coat.
¹⁹ [God] has thrown me into the mud;
I have become like dust and ashes.

²⁰ "I call out to you [God], but you don't answer me;
I stand up to plead, but you just look at me.
²¹ You have turned cruelly against me;
with your powerful hand you keep persecuting me.
²² You snatch me up on the wind and make me ride it;
you toss me about in the tempest.
²³ For I know that you will bring me to death,
the house assigned to everyone living.

²⁴ "Surely [God] wouldn't strike at a ruin,
if in one's calamity one cried out to him for help.
²⁵ Didn't I weep for those who were in trouble?
Didn't I grieve for the needy?
²⁶ Yet when I hoped for good, what came was bad;
when I expected light, what came was darkness.
²⁷ My insides are in turmoil; they can't find rest;
days of misery confront me.
²⁸ I go about in sunless gloom,
I rise in the assembly and cry for help.
²⁹ I have become a brother to jackals
and a companion of ostriches.
³⁰ My skin is black and falling off me,
and my bones are burning with heat.
³¹ So my lyre is tuned for mourning,
my pipe to the voice of those who weep.