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📚✭“But now those who are younger than I mock at me, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.2 Yes, what could the strength of their hands profit me, since their vigor was gone?
3 📚They were emaciated from want and hunger, having lately fled to the desolate and waste wilderness.
4 📚They plucked salt marsh plants beside the bushes, and their food was the root of the broom tree.
5 📚They were driven out from among the people (who cried out after them as after a thief),
6 📚To live among the cliffs of the ravines, in the caves and rocks of the land.
7 📚They brayed among the bushes, and gathered together under the nettles.
8 📚These are the sons of fools, yes, children of base men who were scourged from the land.
9 📚“And now I am their mocking song; yes, I am their byword.
10 📚They abhor me. They keep their distance from me, and do not hold back from spitting in my face.
11 📚Because he has loosened my bowstring and afflicted me, they have also cast off restraint in my presence.
12 📚At my right hand the youth rise up; they push my feet away, and raise against me their destructive ways.
13 📚They break up my road; without any helper, they set up calamity for me.
14 📚They come on me like a wide break in the wall; in their ruins they come rolling in.
15 📚Terrors are turned on me; they pursue my soul like the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.
16 📚And now my soul is poured out within me. Days of affliction have seized me.
17 📚At night my bones in me are pierced, and my gnawing pains have no rest.
18 📚Because of their great power my clothing is changed; they bind me all around like the collar of my coat.
19 📚He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.
20 📚✭I cry out to you, O God, but you do not hear me. I stand up, but you just watch me.
21 📚You have become cruel to me. With your strong hand you oppose me.
22 📚You lift me up to the wind and make me ride on it, dissolving my substance.
23 📚For I know that you will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all the living.
24 📚✭“But he will not stretch out his hand toward the grave, though they cry out at its destruction.
25 📚✭Did I not weep for anyone in trouble? Was my soul not grieved for the poor?
26 📚When I looked for good, then disaster came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.
27 📚The agitation inside me never stops. Days of affliction confront me.
28 📚I go about mourning, without the light of the sun. I stand up and cry out in the congregation.
29 📚✭I am a brother to jackals, and a companion of owls.
30 📚My skin on me is black, and my bones burn with heat.
31 📚✭And my harp is tuned to mourning, and my flute to the sound of those who weep.