Job 4:8–21

⁸My experience shows that those who plant trouble

and cultivate evil will harvest the same.

⁹A breath from God destroys them.

They vanish in a blast of his anger.

¹⁰The lion roars and the wildcat snarls,

but the teeth of strong lions will be broken.

¹¹The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey,

and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered.

¹²“This truth was given to me in secret,

as though whispered in my ear.

¹³It came to me in a disturbing vision at night,

when people are in a deep sleep.

¹⁴Fear gripped me,

and my bones trembled.

¹⁵A spirit swept past my face,

and my hair stood on end.

¹⁶The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape.

There was a form before my eyes.

In the silence I heard a voice say,

¹⁷‘Can a mortal be innocent before God?

Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’

¹⁸“If God does not trust his own angels

and has charged his messengers with foolishness,

¹⁹how much less will he trust people made of clay!

They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.

²⁰They are alive in the morning but dead by evening,

gone forever without a trace.

²¹Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses,

and they die in ignorance.