Job - Chapter 4

¹ Eliphaz of Teman spoke next. He said:

² If we say something to you, will you bear with us? Who in any case could refrain from speaking now?

³ You have schooled many others, giving strength to feeble hands;

⁴ your words supported any who wavered and strengthened every failing knee.

⁵ And now your turn has come, and you lose patience, at the first touch on yourself you are overwhelmed!

⁶ Does not your piety give you confidence, and your integrity of life give you hope?

⁷ Can you recall anyone guiltless that perished? Where then have the honest been wiped out?

⁸ I speak from experience: those who plough iniquity and sow disaster, reap just that.

⁹ Under the breath of God, they perish: a blast of his anger, and they are destroyed;

¹⁰ the lion's roars, his savage growls, like the fangs of a lion cub, are broken off.

¹¹ The lion dies for lack of prey and the lioness's whelps are dispersed.

¹² I have received a secret revelation, a whisper has come to my ears;

¹³ by night when dreams confuse the mind and slumber lies heavy on everyone,

¹⁴ a shiver of horror ran through me and filled all my bones with fright.

¹⁵ A breath slid over my face, the hairs of my body bristled.

¹⁶ Someone stood there -- I did not know his face, but the form stayed there before my eyes. Silence -- then I heard a voice,

¹⁷ 'Can a mortal seem upright to God, would anybody seem pure in the presence of his Maker?

¹⁸ God cannot rely even on his own servants, even with his angels he finds fault.

¹⁹ What then of those who live in houses of clay, who are founded on dust?

²⁰ They are crushed as easily as a moth, between morning and evening they are ground to powder. They vanish for ever, with no one to bring them back.

²¹ Their tent-peg is snatched from them, and they die devoid of wisdom.'

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