ORMs often end up defining their own domain-specific language which is neither SQL nor the language itself, so they don't really solve that problem except in the simplest cases.

It's easy to read SQL code as long as the person writing the query doesn't resort to "hack" the planner. Now to make that reusable....That's another beast and most often will defeat the purpose of writing pure SQL in the first place, let's put a OR there, let's call several queries, let's screw the data model.

It solves a hard problem. For example, it completely insulates the sender from the fact that his transaction is just one among many others.