4 “No one can make something clean from something so dirty.
5 The length of our life has been decided. You alone know how long that is. You have set the limits for us and nothing can change them.
6 So stop watching us; leave us alone, and let us enjoy this hard life until we have put in our time.
7 “There is always hope for a tree. If it is cut down, it can grow again. It will keep sending out new branches.
8 Its roots might grow old in the ground and its stump die in the dirt,
9 but with water, it will grow again. It will grow branches like a new plant.
10 But when a man dies, he becomes weak and sick, and then he is gone!