Job 4

FIRST SERIES OF SPEECHES

ELIPHAZ SPEAKS

4Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

²Should anyone try to speak with you

when you are exhausted?

Yet who can keep from speaking?

³Indeed, you have instructed many

and have strengthened^g weak hands.

⁴Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling

and braced the knees that were buckling.^h

⁵But now that this has happened to you,

you have become exhausted.

It strikesⁱ you, and you are dismayed.

⁶Isn’t your piety your confidence,

and the integrity of your life^B your hope?^j

⁷Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent?

Where have the honest^C been destroyed?^k

⁸In my experience, those who plow injustice

and those who sow trouble^l reap the same.^m

⁹They perish at a single blastⁿ from God

and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.^o

¹⁰The lion may roar and the fierce lion^p growl,

but the teeth of young lions are broken.^q

¹¹The strong lion dies if it catches no prey,

and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.^r

¹²A word was brought to me in secret;

my ears caught a whisper of it.^s

¹³Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night,^t

when deep sleep^u comes over men,

¹⁴fear and trembling came over me^v

and made all my bones shake.

¹⁵I felt a draft^D on my face,

and the hair on my body stood up.

¹⁶A 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?”^w

¹⁸If God puts no trust in his servants

and he charges his angels with foolishness,^Ex

¹⁹how much more those who dwell in clay houses,^y

whose foundation is in the dust,

who are crushed like a moth!

²⁰They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk;

they perish forever while no one notices.^z

²¹Are their tent cords not pulled up?

They die without wisdom.^aa