Job 4

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

² "If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended? Yet who can keep from speaking?

³ Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands.

⁴ Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees.

⁵ But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed.

⁶ Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?

⁷ "Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?

⁸ As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

⁹ By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.

¹⁰ The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

¹¹ The strong lion perishes for lack of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

¹² "Now a word was brought to me stealthily, my ear received the whisper of it.

¹³ Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,

¹⁴ dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake.

¹⁵ A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.

¹⁶ It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice:

¹⁷ 'Can mortal man be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?

¹⁸ Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error;

¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth.

²⁰ Between morning and evening they are destroyed; they perish for ever without any regarding it.

²¹ If their tent-cord is plucked up within them, do they not die, and that without wisdom?'