Family Prayer
in the Early Evening

30 “But now they laugh at me,
    men who are younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
    to set with the dogs of my flock.
² What could I gain from the strength of their hands,
    men whose vigor is gone?
³ Through want and hard hunger
    they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;
⁴ they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes,
    and the roots of the broom tree for their food.
⁵ They are driven out from human company;
    they shout after them as after a thief.
⁶ In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell,
    in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
⁷ Among the bushes they bray;
    under the nettles they huddle together.
⁸ A senseless, a nameless brood,
    they have been whipped out of the land.

⁹ “And now I have become their song;
    I am a byword to them.
¹⁰ They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
    they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.
¹¹ Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,
    they have cast off restraint in my presence.
¹² On my right hand the rabble rise;
    they push away my feet;
    they cast up against me their ways of destruction.
¹³ They break up my path;
    they promote my calamity;
    they need no one to help them.
¹⁴ As through a wide breach they come;
    amid the crash they roll on.
¹⁵ Terrors are turned upon me;
    my honor is pursued as by the wind,
    and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.

¹⁶ “And now my soul is poured out within me;
    days of affliction have taken hold of me.
¹⁷ The night racks my bones,
    and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.
¹⁸ With great force my garment is disfigured;
    it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.
¹⁹ God has cast me into the mire,
    and I have become like dust and ashes.
²⁰ I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
    I stand, and you only look at me.
²¹ You have turned cruel to me;
    with the might of your hand you persecute me.
²² You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it,
    and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
²³ For I know that you will bring me to death
    and to the house appointed for all living.

²⁴ “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand,
    and in his disaster cry for help?
²⁵ Did not I weep for him whose day was hard?
    Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
²⁶ But when I hoped for good, evil came,
    and when I waited for light, darkness came.
²⁷ My inward parts are in turmoil and never still;
    days of affliction come to meet me.
²⁸ I go about darkened, but not by the sun;
    I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
²⁹ I am a brother of jackals
    and a companion of ostriches.
³⁰ My skin turns black and falls from me,
    and my bones burn with heat.
³¹ My lyre is turned to mourning,
    and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.