Job 14:7-12

The Voice

⁷     You know, at least there is a kind of hope for a tree:
        if it gets cut down, it may yet sprout again out of the roots.
        And very likely then, its tender shoots will not die.
⁸     Its roots may age deep under the ground,
        and the stump appear dead in the dry earth,
⁹     But even then it needs only the merest whiff of water
        to bud again and put forth shoots like a newly planted sapling.
¹⁰     But not so with humankind.
        The noblest of human beings dies and lies flat.
    Humans die, and where do they go?
¹¹         Just as water evaporates from the sea,
    And riverbeds go parched and dry,
¹²         so humankind lies down and does not rise again.
    Until the day when the skies are done away with,
        humankind will neither awaken nor rouse from slumber.