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²¹ ‘They listened to me, and waited,
   and kept silence for my counsel.
²² After I spoke they did not speak again,
   and my word dropped upon them like dew.^*
23 They waited for me as for the rain;
   they opened their mouths as for the spring rain.
²⁴ I smiled on them when they had no confidence;
   and the light of my countenance they did not extinguish.^*
25 I 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.
² What could I gain from the strength of their hands?
   All their vigour is gone.
³ Through want and hard hunger
   they gnaw the dry and desolate ground,
⁴ they pick mallow and the leaves of bushes,
   and to warm themselves the roots of broom.
⁵ They are driven out from society;
   people shout after them as after a thief.
⁶ In the gullies of wadis they must live,
   in holes in the ground, and in the rocks.
⁷ Among the bushes they bray;
   under the nettles they huddle together.
⁸ A 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.
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 bowstring and humbled me,
   they have cast off restraint in my presence.
¹² On my right hand the rabble rise up;
   they send me sprawling,
   and build roads for my ruin.
¹³ They break up my path,
   they promote my calamity;
   no one restrains^* them.
¹⁴ As through a wide breach they come;
   amid the crash they roll on.
¹⁵ Terrors are turned upon me;
   my honour is pursued as by the wind,
   and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.