Job 14 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

A human being, born from a woman, gets a few days and a bellyful of trouble.

He comes up like a flower and gets cut down. He runs off like a shadow and never once stands still.

And you keep your eye open on something like that? You drag me into court with you?

Who can pull something clean out of something filthy? Nobody can.

His days are decided already. The number of his months sits with you. You drew the line, and he does not get past it.

So look away from him. Leave him alone, until he can enjoy the end of his shift like a hired hand.

There is hope for a tree. Cut it down and it starts over; the new shoot will not give up.

Even if its root grows old in the ground and its stump dies off in the dust,

at the first smell of water it buds and puts out branches like a young plant.

But a man dies, and he is finished. A human breathes out — and where is he?

Water goes out of a lake. A river runs down and dries up.

That is how a man lies down and does not get up. Until the sky is gone he will not wake. Nothing will shake him out of that sleep.

If only you would hide me in the world of the dead — tuck me away until your anger has burned itself out, set me a date and then remember me.

If a man dies, does he live again? Every day of my hard duty I would keep waiting, right up until my relief arrived.

You would call, and I would answer you. You would ache for the thing your own hands made.

As it is, you count every step I take. You never once look past a failure of mine.

My rebellion is sealed up in a bag. You plaster over everything I did wrong.

But a mountain comes apart and falls. A rock gets shifted off its own ground.

Water grinds stones down. The runoff washes the topsoil off the land. And that is what you do to a person's hope — you wear it away to nothing.

You overpower him once and for all, and he goes. You change his face and send him away.

His sons are honored, and he never knows it. They are brought low, and he never notices.

He feels only the pain of his own body. He mourns only for himself.