or as a hidden untimely birth, as infants who never saw light?
I should have been as though I had not been – brought from the womb to the burial-site.
or with rulers who had gold, who filled their houses with silver,
There the wrong cease raging, and there the weary are at rest,
Like a snail which melts away as it moves, Like a woman’s stillbirth, Let them not see the sun!
Before your pots feel the thorns, Whether green or ablaze, He sweeps them away.
And better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
If a man brings forth a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his being is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial-place, I say that a premature birth is better than he,
And last of all He was seen by me also, as if to one born prematurely.