| 1 | “A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, |
| 2 | comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. |
| 3 | Do you fix your eyes on such a one? Do you bring me into judgment with you? |
| 4 | Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one can. |
| 5 | Since their days are determined, and the number of their months is known to you, and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass, |
| 6 | look away from them, and desist, that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days. |
| 7 | “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. |
| 8 | Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, |
| 9 | yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. |
| 10 | But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they? |
| 11 | As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, |
| 12 | so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep. |
| 13 | O that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! |
| 14 | If mortals die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come. |
| 15 | You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands. |
| 16 | For then you would not number my steps, you would not keep watch over my sin; |
| 17 | my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity. |
| 18 | “But the mountain falls and crumbles away, and the rock is removed from its place; |
| 19 | the waters wear away the stones; the torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of mortals. |
| 20 | You prevail forever against them, and they pass away; you change their countenance, and send them away. |
| 21 | Their children come to honor, and they do not know it; they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed. |
| 22 | They feel only the pain of their own bodies, and mourn only for themselves.” |