• 1 “Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble.
  • 2 They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
  • 3 Do you fix your eye on them? Will you bring them before you for judgment?
  • 4 Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!
  • 5 A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.
  • 6 So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.
  • 7 “At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.
  • 8 Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil,
  • 9 yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.
  • 10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.
  • 11 As the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
  • 12 so he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake or be roused from their sleep.
  • 13 “If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed! If only you would set me a time and then remember me!
  • 14 If someone dies, will they live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come.
  • 15 You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.
  • 16 Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin.
  • 17 My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.
  • 18 “But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as a rock is moved from its place,
  • 19 as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy a person’s hope.
  • 20 You overpower them once for all, and they are gone; you change their countenance and send them away.
  • 21 If their children are honored, they do not know it; if their offspring are brought low, they do not see it.
  • 22 They feel but the pain of their own bodies and mourn only for themselves.”