| | 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?' | |
