1 For they said within themselves, with unsound reasoning, “Our life is short and sorrowful. There is no healing when a man comes to his end, and no one was ever known who was released from Hades. (WEB) 2 Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we will be as though we had never been, because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our heart, (WEB) 3 which being extinguished, the body will be turned into ashes, and the spirit will be dispersed as thin air. (WEB)
Wisdom of Solomon 2:1–3
Semantically similar passages
2 Baruch 14:9–10
9 Or who will be able to think out Thy incomprehensible counsel? Or who of those that are born has ever found The beginning or end of Thy wisdom? (2BA) 10 For we have all been made like a breath. For as the breath ascends involuntarily, and again dies, so it is with the… (2BA)
2 Esdras 8:57–59
57 Moreover they have trodden down his righteous, (WEB) 58 and said in their heart that there is no God—even knowing that they must die. (WEB) 59 For as the things I have said will welcome you, so thirst and pain which are prepared for them. For the Most High didn’t intend that men… (WEB)
Job 14:9–11
9 at the scent of water it will bud and put forth twigs like a sapling. 10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he? 11 As water disappears from the sea and a river becomes parched and dry,
Ecclesiastes 6:3–5
3 A man may father a hundred children and live for many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he is unsatisfied with his prosperity and does not even receive a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 For a stillborn child enters i…
Psalms 146:3–5
3 Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save. 4 When his spirit departs, he returns to the ground; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,
Psalms 78:38–40
38 And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath. 39 He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return. 40 How often they disobeyed Him in th…
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1–3
1 But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will touch them. (WEB) 2 In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died. Their departure was considered a disaster, (WEB) 3 and their travel away from us ruin, but they are in peace. (WEB)
Wisdom of Solomon 5:12–14
12 Or it is like when an arrow is shot at a mark, the air it divided closes up again immediately, so that men don’t know where it passed through. (WEB) 13 So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be; and we had no sign of virtue to show, but we were utterly consumed… (WEB)
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