Job 14:1–22

¹“How frail is humanity!

How short is life, how full of trouble!

²We blossom like a flower and then wither.

Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.

³Must you keep an eye on such a frail creature

and demand an accounting from me?

⁴Who can bring purity out of an impure person?

No one!

⁵You have decided the length of our lives.

You know how many months we will live,

and we are not given a minute longer.

⁶So leave us alone and let us rest!

We are like hired hands, so let us finish our work in peace.

⁷“Even a tree has more hope!

If it is cut down, it will sprout again

and grow new branches.

⁸Though its roots have grown old in the earth

and its stump decays,

⁹at the scent of water it will bud

and sprout again like a new seedling.

¹⁰“But when people die, their strength is gone.

They breathe their last, and then where are they?

¹¹As water evaporates from a lake

and a river disappears in drought,

¹²people are laid to rest and do not rise again.

Until the heavens are no more, they will not wake up

nor be roused from their sleep.

¹³“I wish you would hide me in the grave

and forget me there until your anger has passed.

But mark your calendar to think of me again!

¹⁴Can the dead live again?

If so, this would give me hope through all my years of struggle,

and I would eagerly await the release of death.

¹⁵You would call and I would answer,

and you would yearn for me, your handiwork.

¹⁶For then you would guard my steps,

instead of watching for my sins.

¹⁷My sins would be sealed in a pouch,

and you would cover my guilt.

¹⁸“But instead, as mountains fall and crumble

and as rocks fall from a cliff,

¹⁹as water wears away the stones

and floods wash away the soil,

so you destroy people’s hope.

²⁰You always overpower them, and they pass from the scene.

You disfigure them in death and send them away.

²¹They never know if their children grow up in honor

or sink to insignificance.

²²They suffer painfully;

their life is full of trouble.”