Job 14

Job 14

¹“A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,[#Job 5.7; Eccl 2.23]

²comes up like a flower and withers,[#Ps 90.5, 6; Jas 1.10; 1 Pet 1.24]

flees like a shadow and does not last.

³Do you fix your eyes on such a one?[#Ps 143.2; 144.3]

Do you bring me into judgment with you?

⁴Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?[#Ps 51.2, 10; Jn 3.6; Rom 5.12; Eph 2.3]

No one can.

⁵Since their days are determined,[#Job 21.21; Ps 139.16; Acts 17.26]

and the number of their months is known to you,

and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,

⁶look away from them and desist,[#Job 7.1, 19; #14.6 Cn: Heb that they may 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.

⁸Though its root grows old in the earth

and its stump dies in the ground,

⁹yet at the scent of water it will bud[#Isa 55.10]

and put forth branches like a young plant.

¹⁰But mortals die and are laid low;[#Job 13.19]

humans expire, and where are they?

¹¹As waters fail from a lake[#Isa 19.5]

and a river wastes away and dries up,

¹²so mortals lie down and do not rise again;[#Ps 102.26; Acts 3.21; Rev 20.11; 21.1]

until the heavens are no more, they will not awake

or be roused out of their sleep.

¹³O that you would hide me in Sheol,[#Isa 26.20]

that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,

that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!

¹⁴If mortals die, will they live again?[#Job 7.1]

All the days of my service I would wait

until my release should come.

¹⁵You would call, and I would answer you;

you would long for the work of your hands.

¹⁶For then you would not number my steps;[#Job 10.6; 31.4; 34.21; Prov 5.21; Jer 32.19; #14.16 Syr: Heb lacks not]

you would not keep watch over my sin;

¹⁷my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,[#Deut 32.34; Hos 13.12]

and you would cover over my iniquity.

¹⁸“But the mountain falls and crumbles away,[#Job 18.4]

and the rock is removed from its place;

¹⁹the waters wear away the stones;

the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;

so you destroy the hope of mortals.

²⁰You prevail forever against them, and they pass away;[#Job 34.20; Jas 1.10]

you change their countenance and send them away.

²¹Their children come to honor, and they do not know it;[#Eccl 9.5; Isa 55.10]

they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.

²²They feel only the pain of their own bodies

and mourn only for themselves.”