"_Upon my right hand rise the low brood, They push away my feet, And cast up against me their ways of destruction; They mar my path, And force on my calamity-- They who have no helper. They come in as through a wide breach, In the desolation they roll themselves upon me._" The various images, of a besieging army, of those who wantonly break up paths made with difficulty, of a breach in the embankment of a river, are to show that Job is now accounted one of the meanest, whom any man may treat with indignity. He was once the idol of the populace; "now none so poor to do him reverence." And this persecution by base men is only a sign of deeper abasement. As a horde of terrors sent by God he feels the reproaches and sorrows of his state. "_Terrors are turned upon me; They chase away mine honour as the wind, And my welfare passeth as a cloud. And now my soul is poured out in me The days of affliction have taken hold upon me._" Thought shifts naturally to the awful disease which has caused his body to swell and to become black as with dust and ashes. And this leads him to his final vehement complaint against Eloah. How can He so abase and destroy His servant? "_I cry unto Thee and Thou dost not hear me; I stand up, and Thou lookest at me. Thou art turned to be cruel unto me: With the might of Thine hand Thou persecutest me. Thou liftest me up to the wind, Thou causest me to ride on it; And Thou dissolvest me in the storm. For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death, And to the house appointed for all living. Yet in overthrow doth not one stretch out his hand? In destruction, doth he not because of this utter a cry?_" Standing up in his wretchedness he is fully visible to the Divine eye, still no prayer moves Eloah the terrible from His purpose. It seems to be finally appointed that in dishonour Job shall die. Yet, destined to this fate, his hope a mockery, shall he not stretch out his hand, cry aloud as life falls to the grave in ruin? How differently is God treating him from the way in which he treated those who were in trouble! He is asking in vain that pity which he himself had often shown. Why should this be? How can it be, and Eloah remain the Just and Living One? Pained without and within, unable to refrain from crying out when people gather about him, a brother to jackals whose howlings are heard all night, a companion to the grieving ostrich, his bones burned by raging fever, his harp turned to wailing and his lute into the voice of them that weep, he can scarce believe himself the same man that once walked in honour and gladness in the sight of earth and heaven.