Job Continues: Death Comes Soon to All

¹“Man who is born of a woman

is few of days and full of trouble.

²He comes out like a flower and withers;

he flees like a shadow and continues not.

³And do you open your eyes on such a one

and bring me into judgment with you?

⁴Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?

There is not one.

⁵Since his days are determined,

and the number of his months is with you,

and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,

⁶look away from him and leave him alone,1

that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.

⁷“For there is hope for a tree,

if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,

and that its shoots will not cease.

⁸Though its root grow old in the earth,

and its stump die in the soil,

⁹yet at the scent of water it will bud

and put out branches like a young plant.

¹⁰But a man dies and is laid low;

man breathes his last, and where is he?

¹¹As waters fail from a lake

and a river wastes away and dries up,

¹²so a man lies down and rises not again;

till the heavens are no more he will not awake

or be roused out of his sleep.

¹³Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,

that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,

that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!

¹⁴If a man dies, shall he live again?

All the days of my service I would wait,

till my renewal2 should come.

¹⁵You would call, and I would answer you;

you would long for the work of your hands.

¹⁶For then you would number my steps;

you would not keep watch over my sin;

¹⁷my 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;

¹⁹the waters wear away the stones;

the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;

so you destroy the hope of man.

²⁰You prevail forever against him, and he passes;

you change his countenance, and send him away.

²¹His sons come to honor, and he does not know it;

they are brought low, and he perceives it not.

²²He feels only the pain of his own body,

and he mourns only for himself.”