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