[1] Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: [2] Should anyone try to speak with you when you are exhausted? Yet who can keep from speaking? [3] Indeed, you have instructed many and have strengthened weak hands. [4] Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling and braced the knees that were buckling. [5] But now that this has happened to you, you have become exhausted. It strikes you, and you are dismayed. [6] Isn't your piety your confidence, and the integrity of your life your hope? [7] Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent? Where have the honest been destroyed? [8] In my experience, those who plow injustice and those who sow trouble reap the same. [9] They perish at a single blast from God and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils. [10] The lion may roar and the fierce lion growl, but the teeth of young lions are broken. [11] The strong lion dies if it catches no prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. [12] A word was brought to me in secret; my ears caught a whisper of it. [13] Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night, when deep sleep comes over men, [14] fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shake. [15] I felt a draft on my face, and the hair on my body stood up. [16] A figure stood there, but I could not recognize its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes. I heard a whispering voice: [17] "Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?" [18] If God puts no trust in his servants and he charges his angels with foolishness, [19] how much more those who dwell in clay houses, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth! [20] They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; they perish forever while no one notices. [21] Are their tent cords not pulled up? They die without wisdom.
