You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because the worm will eat them.

If I call out to the pit (grave), ‘You are my father’;And to the worm [that feeds on decay], ‘You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],’

“Together they lie down in the dust,And the worms cover them.

“A mother will forget him;The worm feeds on him until he is no longer remembered.And wickedness will be broken like a tree [which cannot be restored].

How much less man, that maggot,And the son of man, that worm!”

But I am [treated as] a worm [insignificant and powerless] and not a man;I am the scorn of men and despised by the people.

“Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel;I will help you,” declares the Lord, “and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

“For the moth will eat them like a garment,And the worm will eat them like wool.But My righteousness and justice [faithfully promised] will exist forever,And My salvation to all generations.”

“Then they will go forth and lookUpon the dead bodies of the [rebellious] menWho have transgressed against Me;For their worm (maggot) will not die,And their fire will not go out;And they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

“Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal;

[where their worm does not die, and the fire is not put out.]

For among them are those who worm their way into homes and captivate morally weak and spiritually-dwarfed women weighed down by [the burden of their] sins, easily swayed by various impulses,