⁹"And now I have become their 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 cord and humbled me,
they have cast off restraint in my presence.
¹²On my right hand the rabble rise,
they drive me forth,
they cast up against me their ways of destruction.
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 honour 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.
¹⁷The night racks my bones,
and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.
¹⁸With violence it seizes my garment;
it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.
¹⁹God has cast me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.
²⁰I cry to you and you not answer me;
I stand, and you not heed me.
²¹You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.
²²You lift me up on the wind, you make me ride on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
²³Yea, 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?
²⁵Did not I weep for him whose day was hard?
Was not my soul grieved for the poor?
²⁶But when I looked for good, evil came;
and when I waited for light, darkness came.
²⁷My heart is in turmoil, and is never still;
days of affliction come to meet me.
²⁸I go about blackened, but not by the sun;
I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help.
²⁹I am a brother of jackals,
and a companion of ostriches.
³⁰My skin turns black and falls from me,
and my bones burn with heat.
³¹My lyre is turned to mourning,
and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.