Ben Sira - chapter 17

17: 1-4, 6-15, 17, 19-20, 22-32 (translation by Edgar Goodspeed)
The Lord created human beings out of the ground, and made them return to it again.  He set a limit to the number of their days, and gave them dominion over what was on the earth.  He clothed them with strength like His own, and made them in His own image.  He put fear of them in every living creature, and made them masters of the wild animals and birds.  He gave them reason and speech and sight, hearing, and mind for thought.  He filled them with the knowledge of understanding, and showed them good and evil.  He put His eyesight in their minds to show them the majesty of His works, so that they would praise His holy name and declare the majesty of His works.  He gave them knowledge also, and gave them a law of life as an inheritance.  He made an everlasting agreement with them, and showed them his decrees.  Their eyes say His glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of His voice.  He said to them, "Beware of all evil," and He gave everyone of them commands about their neighbor.  The ways are always before Him; they cannot be hidden from His eyes.  For every nation He appointed a ruler, but Israel is the Lord's own portion.  All their doings are as clear as the sun before Him, and His eyes rest continually upon their ways.   Their iniquities are not hidden from him, and all their sins are before the Lord.  One's charity is like a signet with the Lord, and a person's liberality He will preserve like the apple of His eye.  Afterward He will rise up and requite them, and pay back their recompense upon their heads.  But to those who repent He has given a way to return, and He encourages those who endurance fails.
Turn to the Lord, and forsake your sins; offer a prayer before Him and lessen your offense.  Draw near to the Most High and turn away from iniquity, and hate bitterly what He abhors.  Who will praise the Most High in Hades, compared with those whogive Him thanks while they still live?  Thanksgiving from the dead perishes as though one were not; it is those who are alive and well that should praise the Lord.  How great is the mercy of the Lord, and His forgiveness for those who turn to Him!  For everything cannot exist in human capacity, for human beings are not immortal.  What is brighter than the sun?   Yet it is eclipsed; so flesh and blood devise evil.  He looks after the power of the very height of heaven, but all human beings are only dust and ashes.