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²¹“They listened to me, and waited, and kept silence for my counsel. ²²After I spoke they did not speak again, and my word dropped upon them like dew. ²³They waited for me as for the rain; they opened their mouths as for the spring rain. ²⁴I smiled on them when they had no confidence; and the light of my countenance they did not extinguish. ²⁵I chose their way, and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners.

30“But now they make sport of me, those who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock. ²What could I gain from the strength of their hands? All their vigor is gone. ³Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry and desolate ground, ⁴they pick mallow and the leaves of bushes, and to warm themselves the roots of broom. ⁵They are driven out from society; people shout after them as after a thief. ⁶In the gullies of wadis they must live, in holes in the ground, and in the rocks. ⁷Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together. ⁸A senseless, disreputable brood, they have been whipped out of the land. ⁹“And now they mock me in song; I am a byword to them. ¹⁰They abhor me, they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me. ¹¹Because God has loosed my bowstring and humbled me, they have cast off restraint in my presence. ¹²On my right hand the rabble rise up; they send me sprawling, and build roads for my ruin. ¹³They break up my path, they promote my calamity; no one restrains them. ¹⁴As through a wide breach they come; amid the crash they roll on.

¹⁵Terrors are turned upon me; my honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.