Job 14:1-12

1“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble.

2They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.

3Do you fix your eye on them? Will you bring them Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew me before you for judgment?

4Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!

5A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.

6So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.

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.

8Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil,

9yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.

10But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.

11As the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,

12so he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake or be roused from their sleep.