3. They shall say among themselves, ruefuland groaning through anguish of spirit:“This is the one whom once we held as a laughingstockand as a type for mockery,
4. fools that we were!His life we accounted madness,and death dishonored.
5. See how he is accounted among the heavenly beings;how his lot is with the holy ones!
6. We, then, have strayed from the way of truth,and the light of righteousness did not shine for us,and the sun did not rise for us.
7. We were entangled in the thorns of mischief and of ruin;we journeyed through trackless deserts,but the way of the Lord we never knew.
8. What did our pride avail us?What have wealth and its boastfulness afforded us?
9. All of them passed like a shadowand like a fleeting rumor;
10. Like a ship traversing the heaving water:when it has passed, no trace can be found,no path of its keel in the waves.
11. Or like a bird flying through the air;no evidence of its course is to be found—But the fluid air, lashed by the beating of pinions,and cleft by the rushing forceOf speeding wings, is traversed;and afterward no mark of passage can be found in it.
12. Or as, when an arrow has been shot at a mark,the parted air straightway flows together againso that none discerns the way it went—
13. Even so, once born, we abruptly came to noughtand held no sign of virtue to display,but were consumed in our wickedness.”
14. Yes, the hope of the wicked is like chaff borne by the wind,and like fine, storm-driven snow;Like smoke scattered by the wind,and like the passing memory of the nomad camping for a single day.