A REMINDER OF DEATH

“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^[a] 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^[b] 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.”