1. “But now those who are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.
2. Of what use is the strength of their hands to me, men in whom ripe age has perished?
3. They are gaunt from lack and famine. They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation.
4. They pluck salt herbs by the bushes. The roots of the broom are their food.
5. They are driven out from among men. They cry after them as after a thief;
6. So that they dwell in frightful valleys, and in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
7. Among the bushes they bray; and under the nettles they are gathered together.
8. They are children of fools, yes, children of base men. They were flogged out of the land.
9. “Now I have become their song. Yes, I am a byword to them.
10. They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, and don’t hesitate to spit in my face.
11. For he has untied his cord, and afflicted me; and they have thrown off restraint before me.
12. On my right hand rise the rabble. They thrust aside my feet, They cast up against me their ways of destruction.
13. They mar my path, They set forward my calamity, without anyone’s help.
14. As through a wide breach they come, in the middle of the ruin they roll themselves in.
15. Terrors have turned on me. They chase my honor as the wind. My welfare has passed away as a cloud.