Home Master Index
←Prev   Job 14 as rendered by/in  Next→ 


14:1  Job: Humankind, born of woman, has a few brief years with much suffering.
14:2  Like a short-lived bloom, he springs up only to wither; like the brief shade gained by a fast-moving cloud, he passes swiftly.
14:3  Lord, is this why You turn Your gaze on such a creature: to bring me, a mere human being, alongside You for judgment?
14:4  Who can take what is impure and defiled to fashion something pure and pristine? No one! We are, after all, so different in nature.
14:5  Since a person’s life is fixed, and You are the One who determines the number of his months, And You set a limit on the length of her life, and since they are incapable of exceeding Your decree,
14:6  The least You can do is turn Your gaze away from him until they pass, so that he can enjoy his day like a hired worker.
14:7  You know, at least there is a kind of hope for a tree: if it gets cut down, it may yet sprout again out of the roots. And very likely then, its tender shoots will not die.
14:8  Its roots may age deep under the ground, and the stump appear dead in the dry earth,
14:9  But even then it needs only the merest whiff of water to bud again and put forth shoots like a newly planted sapling.
14:10  But not so with humankind. The noblest of human beings dies and lies flat. Humans die, and where do they go?
14:11  Just as water evaporates from the sea, And riverbeds go parched and dry,
14:12  so humankind lies down and does not rise again. Until the day when the skies are done away with, humankind will neither awaken nor rouse from slumber.
14:13  O that You would merely hide me in the land of the dead and keep me in secret till Your wrath is gone, until a time You decide when You might think upon me.
14:14  If one dies, can he live again? Through these days of toil and struggle, I will patiently wait until my situation changes.
14:15  You will call out, and I will answer You then; and You will long for me, the work of Your hands, again.
14:16  For then You would still count each of my steps but not focus on my faults.
14:17  My sins would be sealed up as in a bag, and my crimes You would carefully cover up.
14:18  And yet while every crack in me is closely watched, the mountain will slide and erode as the avalanche steals its cliffs away.
14:19  The water grinds at the surface of stones, and the floodwater steals the soil away. This is how You wreck the hope of humankind.
14:20  You continually overwhelm him, and he dies; You alter his appearance and send him away.
14:21  If his children rise to honor, he does not know of it; if they sink to humiliation, he is unaware of it.
14:22  He knows only this: His body feels agony and his soul grieves.