Eliphaz Speaks
1Then 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 weak hands.
4Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling
and braced the knees that were buckling.
5But now that this has happened to you,
you have become exhausted.
It strikes you, and you are dismayed.
6Isn’t your piety your confidence,
and the integrity of your life your hope?
7Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent?
Where have the honest been destroyed?
8In my experience, those who plow injustice
and those who sow trouble reap the same.
9They perish at a single blast from God
and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.
10The lion may roar and the fierce lion growl,
but the teeth of young lions are broken.
11The strong lion dies if it catches no prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
12A word was brought to me in secret;
my ears caught a whisper of it.
13Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night,
when deep sleep comes over men,
14fear and trembling came over me
and made all my bones shake.
15I felt a draft 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?”
18If God puts no trust in his servants
and he charges his angels with foolishness,
19how much more those who dwell in clay houses,
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.
21Are their tent cords not pulled up?
They die without wisdom.