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4. Eliphaz Speaks

    ² “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?
   But who can keep from speaking?
³ Think how you have instructed many,
   how you have strengthened feeble hands.
⁴ Your words have supported those who stumbled;
   you have strengthened faltering knees.
⁵ But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
   it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
⁶ Should not your piety be your confidence
   and your blameless ways your hope?

    ⁷ “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
   Where were the upright ever destroyed?
⁸ As I have observed, those who plow evil
   and those who sow trouble reap it.
⁹ At the breath of God they perish;
   at the blast of his anger they are no more.
¹⁰ The lions may roar and growl,
   yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
¹¹ The lion perishes for lack of prey,
   and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

    ¹² “A word was secretly brought to me,
   my ears caught a whisper of it.
¹³ Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
   when deep sleep falls on people,
¹⁴ fear and trembling seized me
   and made all my bones shake.
¹⁵ A spirit glided past my face,
   and the hair on my body stood on end.
¹⁶ It stopped,
   but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
   and I heard a hushed voice:
¹⁷ ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God?
   Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?
¹⁸ If God places no trust in his servants,
   if he charges his angels with error,
¹⁹ how much more those who live in houses of clay,
   whose foundations are in the dust,
   who are crushed more readily than a moth!
²⁰ Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces;
   unnoticed, they perish forever.
²¹ Are not the cords of their tent pulled up,
   so that they die without wisdom?’