Job 4

4:1

Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

4:2

“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?

4:3

Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.

4:4

Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling.

4:5

But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.

4:6

Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?

4:7

Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?

4:8

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

4:9

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

4:10

The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.

4:11

The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

4:12

Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.

4:13

In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,

4:14

fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.

4:15

Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.

4:16

It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice:

4:17

‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?

4:18

If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,

4:19

how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!

4:20

They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.

4:21

Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’