• Eliphaz

  • 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 perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more.
  • 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 people,
  • 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 even a strong 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?’