For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding.
There is none abiding. — However we may wish to settle and remain in this state of things, it is impossible, because every earthly form is passing swiftly away, all is in a state of revolution and decay, and there is no abiding, מקוה mikveh, no expectation, that we shall be exempt from those changes and chances to which our fathers were subjected. "As the shadow of a bird flying in the air [ avir] of heaven, such are our days upon the earth; nor is there any hope to any son of man that he shall live for ever." - Targum.