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14. Job Replies

¹ “Mortals, born of woman,
   are of few days and full of trouble.
² They spring up like flowers and wither away;
   like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
³ Do you fix your eye on them?
   Will you bring them Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew me before you for judgment?
⁴ Who can bring what is pure from the impure?
   No one!
⁵ A person’s days are determined;
   you have decreed the number of his months
   and have set limits he cannot exceed.
⁶ So 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.
⁸ Its roots may grow old in the ground
   and its stump die in the soil,
⁹ yet at the scent of water it will bud
   and put forth shoots like a plant.
¹⁰ But a man dies and is laid low;
   he breathes his last and is no more.
¹¹ As the water of a lake dries up
   or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
¹² so he lies down and does not rise;
   till the heavens are no more, people will not awake
   or be roused from their sleep.

    ¹³ “If only you would hide me in the grave
   and conceal me till your anger has passed!
If only you would set me a time
   and then remember me!
¹⁴ If someone dies, will they live again?
   All the days of my hard service
   I will wait for my renewal Or release to come.
¹⁵ You will call and I will answer you;
   you will long for the creature your hands have made.
¹⁶ Surely then you will count my steps
   but not keep track of my sin.
¹⁷ My offenses will be sealed up in a bag;
   you will cover over my sin.

    ¹⁸ “But as a mountain erodes and crumbles
   and as a rock is moved from its place,
¹⁹ as water wears away stones
   and torrents wash away the soil,
   so you destroy a person’s hope.
²⁰ You overpower them once for all, and they are gone;
   you change their countenance and send them away.
²¹ If their children are honored, they do not know it;
   if their offspring are brought low, they do not see it.
²² They feel but the pain of their own bodies
   and mourn only for themselves.”