Job 4:1–21

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: ² “If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking? ³ Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands. ⁴ Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling. ⁵ But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed. ⁶ Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope? ⁷ Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed? ⁸ As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who 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 lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken. ¹¹ The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. ¹² Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it. ¹³ In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, ¹⁴ fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder. ¹⁵ Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled. ¹⁶ It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice: ¹⁷ ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker? ¹⁸ If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error, ¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth! ²⁰ They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever. ²¹ Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’