Job 14

Complete Jewish Bible

14 “A human being, born from a woman,
lives a short, trouble-filled life.
² He comes up like a flower and withers away,
flees like a shadow, doesn’t last.
³ You fix your eyes on a creature like this?
You drag him to court with you?
⁴ Who can bring what is pure from something impure?
No one!
⁵ Since his days are fixed in advance,
the number of his months is known to you,
and you have fixed the limits which he can’t cross;
⁶ look away from him, and let him be;
so that, like a hired worker,
he can finish his day in peace.

⁷ “For a tree, there is hope
that if cut down, it will sprout again,
that its shoots will continue to grow.
⁸ Even if its roots grow 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 when a human being grows weak and dies,
he expires; and then where is he?
¹¹ Just as water in a lake disappears,
as a river shrinks and dries up;
¹² so a person lies down and doesn’t arise —
until the sky no longer exists;
it will not awaken,
it won’t be roused from its sleep.

¹³ “I wish you would hide me in Sh’ol,
conceal me until your anger has passed,
then fix a time and remember me!
¹⁴ If a man dies, will he live again?
I will wait all the days of my life
for my change to come.
¹⁵ You will call, and I will answer you;
you will long to see what you made again.
¹⁶ Whereas now you count each step of mine,
then you will not keep watch for my sin.
¹⁷ You will seal up my crime in a bag
and cover over my iniquity.

¹⁸ “Just as a mountain erodes and falls away,
its rock is removed from its place,
¹⁹ the water wears away its stones,
and the floods wash away its soil,
so you destroy a person’s hope.
²⁰ You overpower him, and he passes on;
you change his appearance and send him away.
²¹ His children earn honor, but he doesn’t know it;
or they are brought low, but he doesn’t notice.
²² He feels pain only for his own flesh;
he laments only for himself.”