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Job 4

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