1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: |
2 "If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking? |
3 Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. |
4 Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. |
5 But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. |
6 Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? |
7 "Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? |
8 As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. |
9 At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish. |
10 The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken. |
11 The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. |
12 "A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. |
13 Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, |
14 fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. |
15 A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. |
16 It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice: |
17 'Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? |
18 If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, |
19 how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth! |
20 Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever. |
21 Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?' |