ECB(i)
1 And now they of fewer days than I ridicule me; whose fathers I spurned to set with the dogs of my flock.
2 Yes, what is the force of their hands to me, in whom maturity destructs?
3 For lack and hunger, they are sterile; gnawing into the parch of yesternight of devastation and ruin:
4 who pluck mallows by the shrubs and juniper roots for their bread.
5 They are exiled from the back, they shout at them as after a thief;
6 to tabernacle in the chasms of the wadies, holes of the dust and the rocks;
7 among the shrubs they bray; under the nettles they scrape:
8 sons of fools; yes, sons of nameless men ejected from the earth;
9 and now I am their strummer; yes, I am their utterance.
10 They abhor me; they flee far from me; they spare not to spit in my face.
11 Because he loosed my cord and humbled me, they also sent away the bridle from my face.
12 At my right rise the offspring; they send away my feet; they raise their ways of destruction against me;
13 they tear up my path; they benefit my calamity; they have no helper:
14 they come as a broad breach; they roll themselves under the devastation.
15 Terrors turn on me; they pursue my reputation as the wind; and my salvation passes as a thick cloud.
16 And now my soul pours out on me; the days of humiliation take hold on me;
17 my bones penetrate within me in the night; and my gnawing lies not down.
18 By the great force is my robe disguised; it binds around me as the mouth of my coat.
19 He casts me into the clay and I become as dust and ashes.
20 I cry to you, and you answer me not; I stand, and you discern me not:
21 you turn cruel to me; with your mighty hand you oppose me:
22 you lift me to the wind; you drive me and raze my substance.
23 For I know that you return me to death and to the house of the congregation of all the living.
24 Surely he spreads not his hand to the prey, though they cry in his calamity.
25 Wept I not for him who had a hard day? Grieved not my soul for the needy?
26 When I awaited good, evil came; when I waited for light, darkness came:
27 my inwards boiled and hushed not; the days of humiliation anticipated me.
28 I go darkened without heat; I rise and I cry in the congregation.
29 I am a brother to monsters and a friend to daughters of the owl.
30 My skin blackens on me; my bones scorch with parch.
31 My harp becomes mourning and my woodwind the voice of weeping.