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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?’