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