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Like grass they wither quickly;
    like green plants they wilt away.(A)

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11 Because of your furious wrath,
    you lifted me up just to cast me down.

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15 As for man, his days are like the grass;
    he blossoms like a flower in the field.(A)
16 A wind sweeps over it and it is gone;
    its place knows it no more.

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Chapter 14

Man born of woman
    is short-lived and full of trouble,[a](A)
Like a flower that springs up and fades,(B)
    swift as a shadow that does not abide.

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Footnotes

  1. 14:1 The sorrowful lament of Job is that God should relent in view of the limited life of human beings. When compared to plant life, which dies but can revive, the death of human beings is final. Job’s wild and “unthinkable” wish in vv. 13–17 is a bold stroke of imagination and desire: if only in Sheol he were protected till God would remember him! Were he to live again (v. 14), things would be different, but alas, God destroys “the hope of mortals” (v. 19).

A voice says, “Proclaim!”
    I answer, “What shall I proclaim?”
“All flesh is grass,
    and all their loyalty like the flower of the field.(A)
The grass withers, the flower wilts,
    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.”
“Yes, the people is grass!
    The grass withers, the flower wilts,
    but the word of our God stands forever.”

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