| 1. Linguistic Exegesis The line opens with adam {אָדָם | ʾā-ḏām} ‘human’ placed first for emphasis, presenting the statement as universal rather than individual. The participle yelud {יְלוּד | yə-lûḏ} ‘born’ functions adjectivally, characterizing humanity by origin, and it is completed by the genitive relation with ishshah {אִשָּׁה | ʾiš-šāh} ‘woman,’ forming a compact expression for human frailty from birth. The predicate unfolds in two parallel descriptive phrases: qetsar yamim {קְצַר יָמִים | qə-ṣar yā-mîm} ‘short of days’ uses a construct chain to quantify life as brief, while useva-rogez {וּשְׂבַע־רֹגֶז | ûśə-ḇaʿ rō-ḡeẓ} ‘and full of turmoil’ mirrors the structure with another construct relationship, portraying trouble as abundant. The coordination (vav) links brevity and distress as paired realities, creating balanced poetic parallelism that compresses an entire theology of mortality into two matched clauses. |