14 ‘A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
²     comes up like a flower and withers,
    flees like a shadow and does not last.
³ Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
    Do you bring me into judgement with you?
⁴ Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
    No one can.
⁵ Since their days are determined,
    and the number of their months is known to you,
    and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
⁶ look away from them, and desist,^[a]
    that they may enjoy, like labourers, 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.
⁸ Though its root grows 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 mortals die, and are laid low;
    humans expire, and where are they?
¹¹ As waters fail from a lake,
    and a river wastes away and dries up,
¹² so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
    until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
    or be roused out of their sleep.
¹³ O that you would hide me in Sheol,
    that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
    that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
¹⁴ If mortals die, will they live again?
    All the days of my service I would wait
    until my release should come.
¹⁵ You would call, and I would answer you;
    you would long for the work of your hands.
¹⁶ For then you would not^[b] number my steps,
    you would not keep watch over my sin;
¹⁷ my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
    and you would cover over my iniquity.

¹⁸ ‘But the mountain falls and crumbles away,
    and the rock is removed from its place;
¹⁹ the waters wear away the stones;
    the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;
    so you destroy the hope of mortals.
²⁰ You prevail for ever against them, and they pass away;
    you change their countenance, and send them away.
²¹ Their children come to honour, and they do not know it;
    they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.
²² They feel only the pain of their own bodies,
    and mourn only for themselves.’